#which then led to my super religious path and so on

[rosecoloredknight]

still one of my proudest online gaming moments was when I was being called a "beaner", "frijoleto", and "spick" by some guy talking trash and all I responded was with "I'm sorry, I can't hear you cause you're all the way down there and I'm up here" because I was the scoreboard lobby leader and he was somewhere bottom 3. Everybody laughed. I WAS SO PROUD OF MYSELF.

[xhellodollyx]

Im really tempted to write two different fanfics, mainly due to my disappointment of how the tv series has gone down. However, i haven't written anything super long in years and my writing is rusty (plus i'm an impatient bitch thanks to my adhd brain, lol). The two ideas I have though as essentially as follows:

1. A sort of AU/my version of what I had thought/wanted for the tv series to turn out, basically a rewrite of the two seasons. Mainly that Chucky was going after all of the kids in Hackensack specifically because their parents (or really grandparents) had ties to everything that happened to his parents. That he had a normal childhood and then suddenly he didn't (which would have tied into his obsession with Sarah Pierce and the idea of a family and him wanting kids with her because of what he lost) — everything with Sarah Pierce would make more sense going this route, give it a reason rather than it being what it ended up being, which was that it was pointless, happened for no reason and seemingly went nowhere. Also, it would have tied in with the themes of him trying to turn these kids into killers through trauma, not for some voodoo spell, but because it (his parents' murders) and his therapist pushed him into what he believes was his true nature, and he wanted to inflict that on Jake, Devon, Junior, etc. And to show that with trauma, you can either go down the path that Chucky ultimately did by closing himself off and becoming evil and doing horrible things, and similarly the path Junior ended up going down as well — or choosing to not be that way, to not inflict pain on others despite their own pain and loss, the way Jake, Devon and Lexi ultimately choose (being good people and not murderers.) Season 2 would have explored the religious aspects of having a religion forced down Chucky's throat when he was younger, which then pushed him into voodoo — choosing his own God to serve because he ultimately gets something in return, plus due to his fear of oblivion (which is also often overlooked throughout the series, but even Brad has said himself that this is Chucky's deepest fear and driving motivation for everything he's done since the first movie). There would be themes that parallel Chucky and everything that led him to become what he is to what he essentially ends up putting the main group through.

2. Would basically be an AU where scarface!Chucky comes back somehow and being so out of the loop on everything. Again, I want the idea of a rogue!Chucky which we did have very VERY briefly, but we all know og!Chucky was the head kept in Andy's cabin. There's probably another scarface!Chucky out there because "Chucky Goes Psycho" probably has merch in that universe. I'm trying to think of what the main plot would be, but it could be him trying to find Tiffany and the twins and not remembering much that happened after everything that happened in Andy's cabin, and he hears about everything that went down in his hometown and decides to investigate and cause some of his own mayhem on the way for answers — while also having memories come back of his parents and Dr. Mixter.

Idk, that's all I got. 🤷‍♀️

[jaydeelliottblog]

Joining The "Band" Wagon · Part 2

BAND THAT SURPRISED ME: Periphery ~

I'm thankful to have an amazing boyfriend with a similar taste in music as me. Whenever we go for drives in the car, usually to the supermarket, I occasionally let him take control of my car's aux cable, and he introduces me to new music and bands that I wouldn't have thought to listen to. This was the case with Periphery. I was instantly blown away, obsessed and surprised by Spencer Sotelo's incredible voice and how it's integrated into their music, especially their song "Scarlet". Goosebumps. Actual goosebumps.

BAND THAT CHANGED MY LIFE: Breaking Benjamin ~

The moment I discover something that I know is going to be life-changing to me is almost like a religious experience. I honestly don't really know how else to describe it, but I find myself having deep emotional connections with things that I hold close to my heart. For me, Breaking Benjamin and their music had that exact feeling and connection. I think it stemmed from my overwhelming love for the Halo franchise and Halo 2 in particular. I remember listening to the soundtrack and discovering Breaking Benjamin with "Blow Me Away", which it literally did. It's also hard to express how exactly they changed my life, but all of their songs really hit home in some way and their lyrics trigger nostalgia, as well as good and bad memories with people from the past. Breaking Benjamin really led me down the path of discovering all of the rock bands and music that I love today.

GUILTY PLEASURE: Nickelback ~

I'm so sorry, but I have to admit... Nickelback has some absolute flippin' bangers. I will happily blast out "Rockstar" at full volume and sing along to it at the top of my lungs (only when I'm home alone of course and the neighbours can judge me).

BAND I SHOULD HAVE SEEN BY NOW: Paramore ~

Oh, how I crave to see Paramore live. Being poor sucks and I'd love to experience more gigs and festivals in general, but especially a Paramore gig. I really like the different direction Paramore has taken over the recent years and I love their album "After Laughter". I also adore Hayley Williams so much and I'm actually really into her solo stuff right now! But, having said that, you just can't beat where it all started and feel like a little badass scene kid moshing to their music. I still do... just minus the ripped skinny jeans and coontails. In other words... 🎵WOAAAAAH, I NEVER MEANT TO BRAG!🎵

GREAT BAND TO SEE: P.O.D ~

Sadly I've only ever experienced two major gigs, the first being Ed Sheeran and the second of which, I was lucky enough to see Alien Ant Farm supporting P.O.D in Bristol a few years ago. I admit, I'd never really listened to much of P.O.D's music and only really went to see AAF, but of course, I love P.O.D's song "Boom" and "Alive" and was super excited to see them regardless - and since then, I've listened to more of their music. They're amazing live, very high energy, got the crowd going and involved and it was such an awesome night and a great experience.

I hope you enjoyed reading about my choices and give them a listen, if you haven't already. Let me know if you agree or disagree with me! Make sure to check out my Spotify playlist for this blog post, linked below.

Also! Please feel free to copy and paste and add in your own answers! Leave them as a comment below or share them to your own Facebook/Instagram and encourage others to add their bands (and maybe tag me @callmejelli_ so that I can have a read).

[horde-princess]

jesus/adora meta pwease 👉👈😳

okayokay ive been thinking about this for a long time and the reason ive never written about it is because like. its so BIG. i like to think of adora’s character as a reflection of noelle’s experiences as a former christian, and there is still so much to dive into with that- however i do agree there’s another more abstract layer to adora’s story that challenges some bigger theological ideas. this is probably about to sound wild lksjljfdf i’ll try my best to explain my thought process just disclaimer that it will not make any sense 😌 when do my metas ever make sense tbh. U KNOW WHAT YOU SIGNED UP FOR WHEN YOU FOLLOWED ME BYE

Parallel 1: There’s at least one jesus/adora parallel that’s undeniable and that’s the whole ancient prophesied messiah thing. this wasn’t in the original motu lore so you know it was added for a reason.

Parallel 2: Adora was raised by shadow weaver and light hope to be a willing sacrificial lamb.. the isaac to their abrahams. her faith in god (aka her allegiance to the horde / first ones) demanded that she sacrifice herself to save the world.

i think these 2 parallels provide sufficient evidence to move on with this analysis but later i wanna mention some of the more specific details bc they are super interesting! but yeah for now--there was clearly some theme going on here about subverting the story of jesus... adora was given a divine destiny to save etheria, but save it from what? and why does it matter?

She-Ra criticizes the penal substitutionary atonement theory

what the fuck is that right lsdfdkj I WARNED YOU THIS WAS GONNA BE ABOUT THEOLOGY

ok basically. evangelical christians like to say that jesus died to save us from our sins, but what they actually believe is that jesus died in our place to save us from god’s wrath. that’s an important difference. let me uhh put it another way

god defined sin (as disobeying him), created humans to be inherently sinful, decided he would punish us for the way he made everything.. then sent jesus to save us (from his own unjust anger?? as if it’s an act of mercy lmao)

in a similar way, horde prime defined sin as disobedience, then decided he should kill everyone for it. but he is a 1D villain for the purposes of the show right so instead of prime sending adora as a savior, it’s light hope who sends her. a lil confusing but its all part of the same story light hope is just another metaphor for religion. so far adoras story = jesus.

AND THEN THIS IS THE GENIUS PART--as we know adora’s destiny was never light hope sending her to the world, that was all a lie... her true powers, her true “destiny” came from being chosen BY the world.

!!!!!!! THERE IS. so much here. the whole christian narrative is flipped. writing the next part in italics because its important lkdfjldj

in christianity, a good god sends a savior from heaven to redeem an evil world. in she-ra, it’s an inherently good world that chooses it’s own human hero to save it from an evil god.

which (finally) brings us back to how she-ra criticizes the evangelicals atonement theory. because humanity doesn’t deserve god’s wrath any more than the etherians deserved prime’s wrath. condemning people for disobeying arbitrary rules (e.g. “believe jesus is the only path to life”) makes no sense. however..... if disobedience is not a sin, that means there is no need for atonement. no need for atonement = no savior. no sacrifice. 

tl;dr she-ra compares jesus--a deity sent from heaven as a sacrifice--to adora, a human chosen by the world itself, who avoided that same sacrifice. to me this is a rejection of the idea that humanity needs a divine savior. and beyond that, a rejection of the specific evangelical theory that we needed him to die in our place because we are sinful.

Resurrection through love instead of faith

ok that was a lot lsdkjfld but.. to shift gears a little..... the fact that adora’s sacrifice was unnecessary isn’t as important as how the sacrifice was avoided.

i said before that god defined sin as disobedience but in practice that just means having any personal desire that exists outside of him. shadow weaver and light hope tell adora that in order to follow her destiny she has to “let go” of her friends... as if they’re mutually exclusive, her desires and faith cannot coincide, she must choose between them. its a reflection of the same kind of black & white ultimatums you hear in church. this is how the show was able to frame adora’s love for catra as sinful without explicitly stating it.

when adora ignores her mentors guidance and kisses catra..... first we all cried ldkfj but also. she is committing the ultimate “sin” !! she’s giving into her desires so, according to the dichotomy set up by sw and lh, she’s also rejecting her destiny/faith by default. 

but then... it’s this sin that actually saves adora’s life, whereas faith would’ve led to her death. wait hold on i [goes outside and screams]

so jesus and adora followed very similar destinies right. jesus spends his life rejecting his personal desires, dies for god, and god resurrects him for his obedience. but adora LIVES and its BECAUSE she embraces her earthly desires, leaving behind the religious idea that rejecting your desires leads to salvation.... which is once again the opposite of jesus. like jesus died to save an evil world from sin, but in contrast adora reclaimed her “sin” as something good and it saved her from death, it saved her from needing resurrection at all !!!!! at least, not from god. maybe catra’s kiss symbolizes a different kind of resurrection, one inspired by love instead of faith. new life that isnt earned through sacrifice but given freely (as christians like to claim god’s grace is).

THAT IS SO LDKJFLDFJDDF and this entire time i havent even MENTIONED the fact that this is all in relation to LESBIAN love and LESBIAN desires which is obviously the point of the show and why these themes hit so hard. but even when you take away the lgbt aspect, she-ra still holds up as a fantastic criticism of evangelical theology.

........ 🙂 ok i think my brain is broken jdjdjsj why did i write this

[canary3d-obsessed]

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed Episode 20, part three(!)

(Masterpost) (Other Canary Stuff) (Previous Post)

Warning: Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!

This episode has so much crucially important stuff in it I had to write 3 posts about it! Part one is here, part two is here. 

Don't Start None, Won't Be None

Lan Wangji has never had a real fight with Wei Wuxian before--remember, in their rooftop fight Wei Wuxian never even drew his sword. And since this is going to be a verbal fight, Lan Wangji is going to lose, badly. He's an elegant and articulate speaker, but he's not quick with words, and he speaks directly and sincerely. Weaponized speech is not his area at all, so he's pretty much bringing a knife to a gunfight. A guqin to a flute fight. Whatever. He tries to turn it into a physical confrontation, twice, but Jiang Cheng holds him back.

This throwdown is 100% about religion and orthodoxy; something that is fundamental to both of these young men's lives. Lan Wangji has made it his mission to be as orthodox as possible, doing shit like volunteering to be beaten for drinking when he didn't choose to drink. He's constantly overwhelmed by emotion, and the Lan rules are a source of regulation and safety for him. His emotions around Wei Wuxian are among the most overwhelming he's got, possibly only second to his feelings about his mom.

Right now his feelings are extra overwhelming. 

It's complicated because his relationship with Wei Wuxian literally started off with him punishing Wei Wuxian for heterodoxy. All that time they spent together in the library? Was because Wei Wuxian talked--JUST talked--about using resentful energy for cultivation. Which is precisely the ability he's just shown them, along with a style of killing enemies that's borderline evil and definitely, DEFINITELY unsportsmanlike.

So this is not, Lan Wangji is lovingly worried about Wei Wuxian and Wei Wuxian is pushing him away to avoid an uncomfortable conversation. This is Lan Wangji freaking out because his entire system of belief is being challenged and he's in love with the person who's challenging it.  

Wei Wuxian has shown up to the party wearing an International Mr. Leather tee shirt with a enamel pin stuck to it that says "I get my kicks on route 666" and Lan Wangji just. cannot. deal.  

Never Start a Fight But Always Finish One

Wei Wuxian has a couple of options here. One is to accept, kindly, that he and his friend can't be friends any more because of religion. In this option, in order to preserve his friend's comfortable sense of being right, he would have to tacitly accept that he himself is bad in some way, and allow his friend to keep having his value system, while walking away from him.  

The other choice is to hit so hard that he makes his friend feel really, really bad, and potentially rocks him off of his comfortable foundation. In the short term, the friendship breaks, but if it forces him to actually question his value system, it might lay the groundwork for a new, more accepting friendship.  Anyone who is queer with an anti-queer-religious best friend is probably familiar with this dilemma.

Wei Wuxian chooses the second option, and goes all in from the first moment, calling Lan Wangji "Lan Er Gongzi" and then upgrading to "Hanguang Jun" and even bowing. If it's possible to bow sarcastically, that's what Wei Wuxian is doing. Then he meets his eyes and sticks his chin out, essentially saying "how do you like them apples?"

(more after the cut!)

Lan Wangji's feelings are probably hurt, but he's too busy being mad to show it, and he goes straight to grilling Wei Wuxian, asking him about the killing, the talismans, and giving up the sword, all while Jiang Cheng stands by and wonders what the fuck is happening. 

Lan Wangji is making a fundamental error here, which is he's speaking as if he's an authority instead of as a peer. Wei Wuxian has only ever accepted one authority in his entire life, and that was Jiang Fengmian. Jiang Cheng is the one who, for a change, is approaching as a worried friend, while Lan Wangji approaches as if he has the right to call Wei Wuxian to account.  

Wei Wuxian won't answer his questions and is getting in his face, provoking him in a very quiet and controlled way, and Lan Wangji responds by just being really aggressive. It's interesting to see Wei Wuxian completely mastering his emotions while Lan Wangji is completely....not.  Wei Wuxian pushes harder, saying he's being rude, saying he's being a bad friend.  Which doesn't make any difference to Lan Wanji, who keeps pressing for an answer while Jiang Cheng wonders what the fuck is happening.

Come to Gusu

Wei Wuxian says he already explained, that it's complicated, it will take time to explain, so then Lan Wangji makes the utterly dumbassed demand that Wei Wuxian return to Gusu with him to explain it. What, exactly, is his plan? Bring Wei Wuxian to Gusu and have Lan Xichen (at the very least) and probably also Lan Qiren help him to convince Wei Wuxian that resentful cultivation is bad? How is that likely to work out? Let's have our own flashback, to that classroom interaction that led to the punishment in the library.

Lan Qiren: How will you make sure the resentful energy will only listen to you and not harm others? [Note: he's not wrong, Wei Wuxian] Wei Wuxian: I haven't figured that out yet ["details," as OP's dad used to say] Lan Qiren: If you did, the cultivation world would not allow your existence [i.e. we, the Lan Clan of Gusu, will kill your ass]

Lan Wangji probably doesn't think he's threatening Wei Wuxian with death by inviting him to Gusu, but he kinda is, if Lan Qiren was serious back then.  Lan Wangji is so upset and fearful that he's not really thinking clearly at this point. He loves Wei Wuxian and he's certain that cultivating with resentful energy will destroy him. [Note: he's not wrong, Wei Wuxian]  But Wei Wuxian is beyond fear. He's already been destroyed once.

Wei Wuxian rips on Gusu and then says, in a super-provocative way, that he prefers Yunmeng, which prompts Lan Wangji to say "don't joke around" as angrily as possible. 

This part of the interaction always confuses me because...shouldn't he prefer Yunmeng? He's actually from there and lives there and belongs there and stuff? He's just saying "I think I'll go with my brother" yet WWX and LWJ both act like he said he'd rather go to Demon City.

Lan Wangji takes a big step forward and Jiang Cheng blocks him while Wei Wuxian continues to act unperturbed and puzzled while holding his demon flute out in between them. 

Finally, FINALLY, Wei Wuxian calls him Lan Zhan, and asks him a serious question: What do you really want. Lan Wangji calms down for a second--although he keeps leaning into Jiang Cheng's sword block--and gets to the point, which is that the unorthodox path is dangerous, and harmful to his temperament.  

Kill one turtle together and you think you're the boss of me

So, these dudes are talking about 2 different levels of unacceptable cultivation, in this episode and the next few. Netflix translates these as "wicked tricks" and "crafty tricks," which both sound absolutely ludicrous in English, so I'm going to use my own preferred terms, going forward.  

I think what they are calling "Wicked Tricks," which includes spirit snatching and feeding people to the murder turtle on purpose in order to harvest their resentment could be translated as Heresy--adhering to a forbidden belief or practice; standing in opposition to Orthodoxy.  

Edit: After rewatching Episode 35, in which Nie Huaisang explains why their whole blade thing doesn’t count as “wicked tricks,” I’ve changed my mind about what to call this. NHS says that “wicked tricks” specifically involve the use of humans & human spirits (killing, sacrificing, etc.). Which means Necromancy is probably the better term for this particular type of cultivation, although it is still (also) Heresy. 

"Crafty Tricks," which is using resentful energy to raise and control already-dead people (ghosts and zombies) as well as just generally using resentment for basic stuff like beating Jin Zixuan's ass, could be translated as Heterodoxy--deviating from the accepted belief or practice, but not to the point of complete opposition.

Wei Wuxian laughs while Lan Wangji tries to be convincing, but since Lan Wangji is just repeating what he's been taught, he's not making much headway. Instead of saying "there's no exception throughout history" he could have, instead, gone with his own actual observations, such as "you are acting like a sadistic prick" or "you seem amazingly miserable" or "you aren't hugging your brother, what the fuck is that about?" But no.

Wei Wuxian responds to the charge of heresy by saying nuh-uh, and explains his methods, sort of, while going back to calling him Lan Er Gongzi. Lan Er Gongzi responds by actually literally yelling at him, and saying he's not allowed to decide for himself about what he's doing, as if the words "allowed to" have ever meant a goddamn thing to Wei Wuxian.

Temperament

At this point Wei Wuxian is done. He goes and gets right up in Lan Wangji's face and sticks a metaphorical knife right in his heart, smiling as he does it. "How do others know my temperament?" he asks; "and why should it be their concern?" i.e. you are not in my heart. 

This makes Lan Wangji so mad he calls Wei Wuxian "Wei Wuxian" for possibly the only time in the show, and he also flashes a whole bunch of angry teeth. (Gifset here). In a callback to the JFM-YZY fight back in Lotus Pier before the war, Wei Wuxian just calmly says "Lan Wangji" back at him, and then tells him to go fuck himself.

Jiang Cheng still doesn't understand what the fuck is happening, but this is a sentiment he understands, so he also tells Lan Wangji to go fuck himself, reminding him that Wei Wuxian is Jiang clan property and it's not the Lans' place to discipline him. Adding "and I'm not going to discipline him any way, look how good he is at killing people!"

Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji continue to stare into each others' eyes from a distance so close that it really should lead to making out, but they are both much too angry for that. 

Wei Wuxian is as cold as we ever see him, smiling as he silently confirms: I do not belong to you. Lan Wangji glares back, his anger maybe finally giving way, a little bit, to being hurt.

Finish Him!

Wen Chao picks this moment to wake up and crawl over to the trio, begging Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng to save his life, since he presumably knows it's pointless to beg Wei Wuxian. Wei Wuxian turns around and gives him the EXACT SAME dead-eyed smile he just gave Lan Wangji, and kicks him.

Then he tells Lan Wangji to please leave so he and his brother can finish torturing this dude to death, and caps it with an official Jiang Clan eye roll.  

Lan Wangji, poor bb, just throws in the towel, and turns and leaves, the anger finally starting to leave his face and be replaced with something else...chagrin, maybe? Or maybe just softer anger, for the moment. 

After he's out of sight Wei Wuxian turns and looks after him sadly, all of the cruelty and hardness gone from his expression, while Wen Chao says "forgive me,"  possibly voicing what Wei Wuxian is thinking.

Lan Wangji walks out the front gate, troubled, and hears Wen Chao scream. He stops and replays the most pointed part of the fight in his head - the part where Wei Wuxian asked him, "who do you think you are?" Lan Wangji went into the fight believing he was completely right and was entitled to judge Wei Wuxian, but he's come out of it with his certainty shaken. 

Family Time

The Yunmeng brothers go to the ancestral shrine in Lotus Pier even though the whole "reclaiming Lotus Pier" scene doesn't happen until Episode 24. So apparently they just kind of sneak into the the shrine, and then sneak back out. Or, you know, continuity error.  Anyway Wei Wuxian is nothing if not adept at sneaking around death-related places.

Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng bow and offer incense. It's nice that the Wens didn't fuck up everybody's name plaques when they were in control of the place...or the tassels, candles, etc. 

Wei Wuxian quietly tells Yu Ziyuan and Jiang Fengmian that he did what they asked--taking care of Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli--and they can rest now. Nosy parker Jiang Cheng wants to know what he's saying, but Wei Wuxian just changes the subject. 

They talk about going to Qinghe for the final combat of the Sunshot Campaign. Wei Wuxian says that's why he returned, which...dude, you can't even pretend you came back to be with your loved ones? Ouch. Jiang Cheng doesn't really react to that, but he's happy when Wei Wuxian says he wants to see Jiang Yanli. Wei Wuxian wants to know if she's ok and if she's mad at him, and Jiang Cheng says wait and see, because direct answers are not the Jiang Clan way.

Jiang Yanli is helping tend to the wounded, and we see her telling a particularly fussy wounded dude to suck it up and stop complaining. 

When Wei Wuxian shows up she totally stops paying attention to the wounded dude so that she can smile at Wei Wuxian. 

He looks back at her tearfully, briefly managing to smile but then just trying to hold it together. He has been to hell and back, and doing his very best to hide it, but when he sees the person who loves him most--the person who will NOT spend 20 minutes yelling at him as soon as they see him--he starts to crack open.

[taeyamayang]

Oof so I have a tbr for manga that is wayyy to long….. same with actual books too smh. I have BOOKSHELVES of books that I haven’t read yet. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that I find myself doing litterly anything else. I also can’t read manga online because I don’t absorb anything from it and it makes my head hurt.

Also you watched the video 🥺 (my litteral face reading that)? That means a lot, like when someone reads something you recommend and tHEN TALKS TO YOU ABOUT IT? I’m so happy yay. I feel like there are two types of people who are into psychology- those who want to know to help others and themselves and those who want power over others. Everyone starts out with a curiosity, which is good- but it starts to get bad when greed comes into play. Greed demands power and money and once your satisfaction relies more on that than anything else, then all ethics leave the building.

And when it comes to your school I get that things look different on the inside, believe me (*cough* residential and lifelong experience with mental illness lol *cough*) but I love how you found out you were queer. Like lil 12 year old pea is sitting in a class room doodling on their paper and while zoning out while the teachers talking like: “hmm heterosexuality? That ain’t it, dawg.” Of course that’s (probably) not how it went but that’s what I picture when you wrote “didn’t work well with me” lmao.

I think it’s interesting that growing up religious can make a person so numb-…distant? I’m not sure if the right word. I feel like with some, growing up with religion makes it come a core part of their identity, and with others (like you) it became something that was just always there, yknow? I admire how you took your own path with religion even if it’s not a big part in your life. Like you accept that it’s there and it will always be there as a part of your childhood but it doesn’t define you. I feel like many people have a hard part with that step since religion is often screwed into their head by their community and family, sometimes to the point where they don’t know where they are without it, yknow? The thing with religion to me is that it is so large and widespread- and easily misinterpreted. I feel like there is no ‘right way’ to interpret something religious but many people base everything on what they BELIEVE is the right way. This causes so much tension in what is supposed to be something that brings people together. This baffles me because most (well known or common ones in america at least- I don’t have a degree on anything) religions worship the same god, or the same one in different fonts, yknow? But all these religions are seperated by ideals from people who say they know best. This is what leads people into dangerous situations or learning dangerous behaviors. For example, there was no mention of homosexuality in the Bible, but one year it appeared in a reprint and people started looking at it as law, which harmed and even led to the death of many many people over the decades. Also you weren’t rambling, I enjoyed reading about your connection to your religion, everyone is different and it’s interesting to learn about what religion means to you.

That sucks that you were encouraged to date AS A CHILD bruh idc what gender you like that’s a bit weird. Like dating before 14 (high school age in America) is dumb to me because you don’t really know what dating and relationships are and I have never heard of a middle school relationships going remotely well and all you do is regret it in the future. But like when people suspect you and your friend are dating it damages platonic intimacy. Like when it comes to people I’m super close to I’m very huggy and touchy because physical touch is important to me (only if I’m close to them, otherwise ew). This kind of intimacy is important to me because it’s how I show affection in a way that I am comfortable with and for people to say that it’s “gay” (which has happened before, my one close friend who is literally like my sister was told that we look like we are dating- she deadass said “that’s incest” 😭) I feel bad for those people at your school. Especially the guys, because the whole “no homo” bit. The whole “shame” thing to me is weird, I feel like this is common no matter where you go, with appearances and all but I feel like it’s not nearly as big of a deal here (unless you are rich and fancy ig.) but I feel like that’s a lot of pressure to put in a child, yknow. Children are supposed to make mistakes and be cringy! How else are they gonnna grow?

I feel like the dress code makes sense (not to me, but in comparison to all private schools) but this was the first time I’ve heard of the headbands??? Is cheating that common? I kinda chuckled at that one it caught me off guard. I LOVE HOW YOU SPECIFIED “tho it’s a joke” WHEN YOU MENTIONED YOUR SCHOOL BEING CALLED A CULT😭 like ‘we’ve talked about cults so much I gotta make sure I clarified’

Doing new things scare me to but I push myself anyways because too cuz I tend to beat myself up otherwise (the amount of self hatred I have is VERY high smh) I never did sports tho. I knew my limits. High key suprised I don’t have brain damage tho lmao. AND BET!!!! I would love to write that! Now to find the time to…

It took me a long time to love myself and at times it was very painful. It took an even longer time to forgive myself for making bad decisions when i was struggling, but I’m still learning, day by day.

Thank you for the kind words about my experiences and my dream to write a novel, it really means a lot. Normalizing mental health problems and differences between people, especially in children/adolescents is a large goal of mine and u hope that sharing my experiences one day would help do that.

lol you being paired up with many different types of people (including the gays and suspected gays lol) and getting along with them reminds me of when I was at the residental and was chill with everyone. Everyone would often fight with everyone and often had beef with people and I was just sitting there like “wHY CANT WE ALL JUST BE FRIENDS?????” I found it really cool how anyone could be friends with each other when they actually get to know them (and they were in forced proximity too lmao) like I was a awkward 12 year old that wore giant jigglypuff slippers. idk if I mentioned them but I wore them EVERYWHERE all around the school, they became a character trait of mine lol. When the hottoms wore thin (they were crappy Chinatown ones, it didn’t take too long and I wore those things till they were PAPER THIN.) some of the other girls and I huddled around the trash can and held a service for them, stating they would be missed 😭 bUT BACK TO THE POINT. I was an awkward 12 year old with giant ass pink puffs on my feet but I still became friends with all the older party girls and troublemakers. Istg I was the only person that didn’t have any problems with anyone. This made leaving hard, everyone was crying so hard and hugging me so tight, I had to keep handing out tissues (I had a thing where I said “tissue issues” when people were sad or something) so when I did that it only mad everyone cry more 🥲. It was a hard day but we threw a big dance party and I served pie to everyone. Literally, before the lil party I got to choose what we would eat and I was like “how about we just get pie and lemonade?” And we kind just went with it.

I heard of the most hated man on the internet actually and I watched something on the news about it. from what i heard the dude has grown now into a better person, but I could be wrong. Mothers are fucking awesome and people should never ever doubt their ability to fight for their children. Theres a Movie on netflix as well called the Lost Girls and it’s about a mother trying to find out what happened to her daughter. Her daughter was a sex worker and even though there was a clear pattern of missing sex workers the police didn’t do much because they were such high risk people who “knew what they were getting into.” It’s based off a real case in NY that’s STILL UNSOLVED. But luckily the movie helped get some more traction for the the case and got it into the minds of the public and law enforcement. If you are interested in true crime I have a few videos and YouTubers I recommend. I don’t often watch actual documentaries and stuff on Netflix or so because my ADHD brain says no, you can’t have your undivided attention on one thing for that long, that’s nonsense. So I often just listen to true crime stories. My favorite true crime YouTuber is named Eleanor Neale, she’s a great storyteller and is very respectful. Some of my favorite stories of hers are The Hello Kitty Murder, The Tragic Murder Of Child Star Judith Barsi, The Corpse at The Carnival and The Dollhouse of Human Corpses. Most of those are heavier but the last two suprisingly don’t have any murder and the second to last one is just a crazy story- that happens to have a corpse. But it’s not really sad- it’s weird, you would have to check it out yourself lol. Or if you want a more lighthearted channel, check out buzzfeed unsolved, especially the Shane and Ryan videos. They are hilarious and super interesting to watch.

I really hope you enjoyed the wedding! I’ve never been to one tbh, I was supposed to be a bridesmaid like three different times but each time the wedding was called off smh. I enjoy talking to you as well and you can respond whenever your social energy returns, don’t worry I totally understand- more than I want to lol

hello!! i'm back!!.. from my own bubble lol

oh yes same here i have a couple of books which i have not read yet bc i wasnt feeling but now i'm trying to read as much as i can (bc i miss it too and needed inspiration for my writings ngl) take your time. it's always best to enjoy reading when you're in the mood :)

of course i watched it!! i'm a sloooow replier (even irl lmao speaking of which i messaged an irl friend last night and she was so shocked that i replied to her LMAO she spent half of the time flabbergasted lol) but yeah i'm a slow replier but i make sure to understand and be sincere with the messages i send. also, i like it too when someone reads, watch, or check out the thing i recommended that's why do the same. i agree on your take on psychology. it can harm others when practiced unethically.

and omg about my relationship with religion, you describe it perfectly 🥺 thank you 🥺 i am not surr how i exactly put my relationship with faith bc i grew up with it but wasn't exactly attached to it compared to "traditional" religious people. i reread the entire text you sent and i swear i am in awe. this, you, will be my basis when someone asks me what religion is to me lol

I KNOW RIGHT i didn't sit right to me that we were sort of encouraged to date boys. our school and other fancy all boys school in our city have like an interaction day. thats what we call it. they let us hangout with boys visiting our school and let us handle the program. no supervisor nor guardians (have i told you that? if yes please dont mine my pea-memory) IT WAS DOWNRIGHT WEIRD FOR ME. we had speed dating and other games. oh and we were asked to come up with a gift to give them and the all boys school did too. they gave us a pillow and YOU KNOW WHAT each of us HAD TO GIVE IT SOMEONE PERSONALLY its not like "heres a sack of pillows come and get one ladies!" but rather A BOY PERSONALLY COMES UP TO YOU TO GIVE IT it appears as if someone is courting you and im??? i remember when i was giving my token, i picked a random dude with no gift in hand and was like "you dont have this (gift) yet?" and hes like "no" and gave it to him and left. i cant even remember his name 😭 then someone approached me for the pillow and i was like "thanks. cool!" and walked away 💀 we were 14 at that time. it was weird cos in my culture we are always told to date after uni graduation but they were ok with us meeting with boys at age 14/15??? AND EXACTLY! YOU'RE RIGHT nothing goes well with dating at a very young age. we are immature at that age so its no surprise that it will turn into a toxic relationship or unplanned pregnancy.

yes!! some of my closests friends are clingy like talk about hand holding, cuddling, and cheek kisses. one of my friends were suspected to be dating a girl in our friend group (like what happened to you) and was disgusted by it cos were literally sisters lol but some didnt believe them so in the end they went with it. fooling batchmates that they are dating till we graduated. lmai they even call each other babe just to fool everyone 😭 now its a thing in our friend group. we call each other agi (babe) or babe. fortunately, i look 'straight' in the eyes of the admins so i was never suspected to be gay BUT LOL i had a gf in my senior year. the admins were thinking (my ex gf is the typical artistic girl with wavey short locks--- short like boys haircut) she turned me gay BUT HELL NAW I WAS GAY GAY EVEN BEFORE SHE CAME TO MY LIFE I WAS GAY-ER THAN HER i was part of her gay awakening she told me LMAO she was confused how she was feeling romantic feels towards me when she thought she's straight LMAOIOI

about the dresscode. no, cheating was not rampant in our school. they just love to supervise us A LOT so they made us wear headbands with our last names on it lol.

YOU WORE JIGGLYPUFFS SLIPPERS?? THATS SO ADORABLE GSMEBDKESN I CAN IMAGINE IT BEING SO HUGE ON YOUR FEET OR SMTH GSKEHEN SO CUTE!! dude YOU ARE the cool kid. to me, a cool kid can get along with everyone like literally. i think it's a talent also a charm to be friends with individuals with different personalities. which makes the whole moving out thing sad :( its difficult to start anew when you have become comfortable in your home. its hard to reminsce memories when youre far from them it makes it more depressing :( but at least you guys had a dance party and you all had fun. but... you could have spared me pie, ya know? just kidding lol BUT I LOVE PIES NOW IM CRAVING DAMN YOUUUUUUU 🤣

oh yes yes yes omg i have watched lost girls!! it's an interesting too indeed! recently i enjoyed girl in the picture A LOT the twist and turns spiced it all up. it had me mindfucked. also, our father is another one! i'll go check our the ones you recommended me (watch them before i sleep lol) and ill tell you about the ones that strike me :) i do watch buzzfeed unsolved lol i live them both esp when they go out and sleep on a haunted home lmaooo my brother and i love them theyre hilarious and relatable. i wonder if ill ever get the chance to sleep ina haunted home? hm, would you?

three times the weddings were called off?? gsmdbsks oh no, that's tragic. lol i was just an attendee. i barely knew the bride and groom but when the bride entered shitttt i was touched?? she looked so enchanting, she was glowing and very very happy. it made me want to cry?? i DONT EVEN KNOW HER PERSONALLY LMAO

anyway, i hope you're doing well and altho you have told me a couple of times now that you dont mind my late responses i will still apologize LMAO but yeah i really enjoy this conversation we have i feel like ive gotten closer to you through our simple messages. may the days treat you well! hope to hear from you ♡

OH WAIT IVE GOT SOMETHING TO SHOW YOU!! I TOOK MOMO TO THE BEACH AND ITS HER FIRST TIME!! she loved the sand so much but i had to push her on lease bc she was a scaredy cat lol

[witchestlunarie]

I'm a black Christian as well! But I've never met a Christian witch before! May I ask how that works and what type of witchcraft you practice? 💖💖

omg hi!! i see you’re also haitian (like me) so i automatically followed🖤 i grinned the biggest grin seeing the flag in your bio

also i feel like my answer will be a bit underwhelming, but the truth is that i’m still at the VERY beginning of my practice and spiritual journey. i haven’t actively started practicing magick and performing spells yet, as i’m deep in the research stage, but i identify as a witch because that’s the path i’ve set myself on. my family is very religious — my father is a reverend — so i can’t practice openly anyway. im waiting until i can move into my place before i begin setting up altars and such. im deep in the broom closet (but im also a closeted non-binary and bisexual so this is a familiar ride already lmaoo)

by heritage, i probably should take more of a voudou path, seeing as my ancestors (up until my paternal grandmother converted to christianity) practiced voudou, but i was raised christian and i find the abrahamic pantheon more genuine and alluring to me.

nevertheless, my goal is to eventually work with jesus and the archangels specifically (all with Adonai at the top because He comes first ofc). i’ve been obsessed with angels since i was a kid (im named after one lol), so knowing that i can learn to interact with them and learn from them? YEAH sign me up! i already know my practice is gonna be super eclectic because there’s so much that i wanna incorporate (adonai, jesus, angels, the earth, the moon, music, hearth witchery, etc).

i’ve always sort of felt the lure of witchcraft, and before starting my spiritual journey i felt extremely disconnected from my faith. it felt disingenuous and performative, and it wasn’t until i discovered christian witchery that i realized my walk with Adonai didn’t have to look exactly like mainstream evangelicism.

truth be told, i didn’t even know christian witches COULD exist until a few months ago. and since then i’ve taken to steps to really research the history of the bible, it’s formation, who was responsible for compiling it (new testament specifically), and how it’s been changed and edited again and again over time. that being said, my eyes have been opened to a lot of truths that aren’t taught — or at the very least, haven’t been taught to me. case in point: most mentions of witchcraft in the bible originally referenced those who poison/do others harm, and it was later simplified to “witchcraft” to further demonize witches and those who practice magick.

ANYWAY that was a super long ramble (sorry, sorry) but thank you for asking and furthermore being respectful 🤍 i’m still learning more and more every day, but i’m happy with the progress i’ve made. discovering christian witchery led me away from forsaking Adonai altogether (which i came very close to doing), and instead forging a new path that feels so much more genuine, something that really grounds my faith

amen & blessed be

- 🖤 lunarie

[tendaysofrain]

Random Stuff #9:  Daoist Elements and More in The Untamed/MDZS Part 1 - Concepts

(Part 2 Here) (Super-long post ahead!)

Though The Untamed is a Xianxia/仙侠 drama (kind of like fantasy genre), there are some elements in it that had clear roots in Chinese culture, especially religious/philosophical Daoism.  So here are some Daoist elements within the world of The Untamed/MDZS:

“Cultivation” (Dao)/道 

In Chinese, the “cultivation method” is the “Dao”/“道”, which some of you may recognize as that character that sometimes stands for Daoism.  Within Daoism however, that character has a deeper meaning than just a name; in fact it is one of the most important concepts of both philosophical and religious Daoism (it also has a few different meanings, but the world of The Untamed mostly focuses on one of them; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a very comprehensive article entry on Daoism that explains the concept of Dao in detail, for anyone who’s interested in more scholarly explanations).  It actually translates best as “way” or “path” (note:  when not referring to a specific “way”, it absolutely CANNOT be translated as “the way” or “the path”, and I will get to why that’s important), and basically means a “way” of doing something.  For example, to make a salad you might rip the lettuce leaves or cut them with a knife.  Both of these methods would be “ways”/道 of making a salad.  And as you can see in this example, there are many different ways of arriving at a result or accomplishing a goal.  Since Dao encompasses all of the different ways of doing all the different things, it cannot be translated as “the way”, since “the” would imply that “there is only one way”, or “only one right way”, of doing things.  

(image credit:  My Great Lakes)

This concept that there is more than one way to accomplish something is very important to the story of The Untamed/MDZS, especially in terms of Wei Wuxian.  But we have to clarify the “goal” in The Untamed/MDZS first:  what was it that these people were trying to accomplish with their different “ways”?  Looking at the overall story, it appears that they were all generally trying to do good and uphold justice by warding off or neutralizing supernatural threats.  Now that we’ve established the goal, let’s return to WWX.  In the story, WWX was forced to give up the regular “cultivation”/ the “sword path”/剑道, instead founding the “demonic cultivation”/”dark path”/魔道 in order to survive the extreme environment of the Burial Mounds and acquire enough power to get revenge on the Wens.  Since the Wens killed a lot of people, WWX would also be upholding justice by punishing them for their evil deeds.  As the lyrics of the opening song of MDZS animated series puts it:  “though his (WWX’s) ‘path’ was different, there was justice within his heart” (道不同义在心中).  Conversely, this is also why the sects/clans were wrong to label different “cultivations”/“ways” as good or evil, as both WWX’s “demonic cultivation” and the regular “sword path” could be used as powerful forces for good and evil.  Of course, the irony was that while the sects hailed their “sword path” as “the one right path”, they were using it to control each other, instead of using it to do good.

(The two “paths”/daos.  How different are they?)

“Cultivation”/修道 

Well now that we’ve cleared up what “cultivation”/道 or Dao actually is in the context of the show and what the characters were trying to accomplish with their different “ways”, this “cultivation” or 修道 becomes easier to understand.  It means the development (修) of one’s skill in regard to the “path” (道) one has chosen.  For example, most characters chose to develop their skills in the “sword path”.  In actual religious Daoism, however, since the ultimate end purpose is to become an immortal/仙, 修道 would mean doing something to work towards that immortal status.

“Cultivator”/仙

In Daoism, the character “仙” can be translated as “immortal”, “sage”, or “celestial being”, and refers to the end goal of religious Daoists:  to “metamorphose” into an immortal (羽化登仙) (also connotes transitioning into eternal afterlife through death).  The characters “羽化” literally mean “to become feathery”, because at least in Western Han dynasty (202 BC-8 AD) figures and tomb murals, such immortals often appeared as humans with feathers or winged humans, and are capable of flight.  

Over the next few hundred years, the appearance of immortals gradually morphed into humans that fly by floating, standing on platforms of clouds, or riding birds (often cranes)/mythical creatures.  

In the drama and the animated series, 仙 is often used as a descriptor in different words (ex:  仙门, 仙家, 仙侣, 仙缘...etc), rather than a standalone noun.  However, it is still a reference to this general idea of training/cultivating oneself to become something greater, and provides a strong connection to Daoism.

“Cultivators”/修士 

In Daoism, this term is used less than 道士, but it still means “cultivators of Dao” (修道之人), or simply, “Daoists”.  In The Untamed/MDZS, of course, it means practitioners of a “cultivation”/“path”.

“Golden core”/金丹

This one has roots in real life sects of religious Daoism.  The translation “golden core” itself is quite literal.  “Golden” from the descriptor 金, and “core” for 丹, presumably because it looks like a sort of core.  In reality, 丹 is quite hard to translate.  Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy translates 丹 as “alchemy”, so I will use “alchemy” for 丹 from here on out.  In religious Daoism, there are two types of this alchemy:  external and internal, and both are supposed to help one towards immortality.  People who practiced “external alchemy”/外丹 basically made “immortality elixirs” (in reality it wasn’t a drink like “elixir” implies, but a ball-shaped chewable) in the hopes that it would give immortality to whoever ate it.  This is very much like alchemy in Europe, except instead of trying to turn things into gold, people were making things to eat for immortality.  Some fun facts:  these elixirs frequently contained heavy metals like mercury and lead, and ironically would shorten people’s lives instead of helping them live longer; also legend has it that an explosive attempt to make elixirs actually led to the invention of gunpowder.

(these appears to be actual products of external alchemy found in an Eastern Jin dynasty tomb, well-preserved due to its high mercury content)

This external alchemy obviously does not apply to “golden core” in The Untamed/MDZS, so let's look at internal alchemy.  “Internal alchemy”/內丹 is much more abstract than external alchemy, but in simple terms it is the practice of using meditation and similar strategies to return oneself to a state of emptiness (kind of like “one with nature”).  This is probably what the show’s “golden core” was based on.  Also another name for “internal alchemy”/內丹 is “golden alchemy”/金丹, literally the same characters as “golden core”/金丹 in the show.  

There is one major difference though.  While real practitioners of internal alchemy believe that everyone already possess a “golden alchemy” (“golden core”), in the show everyone has to “cultivate” themselves in order to have one in the first place.

[queenlua]

You're a druid and an ex-evangelical, right? What does being a druid mean to you? How did you get from evangelicalism to where you are now? And of course feel free to ignore this if it's nosy. (sincerely, a Christian who wants to leave but who doesn't know what to do)

this is going to make me sound ignorant as hell, lol, but i'm happy to share

under a cut because this got very long, sorry, lol.

my personal progression was: "vaguely christian -> VERY christian -> christian agnostic -> agnostic/atheist -> agnostic/druid -> some sorta druid-neopagan-animist thing."  i guess i'll just go through what made me switch between each of those, and close out with some high-level thoughts that may be helpful for you?

okay, so when i was

VAGUELY CHRISTIAN,

i went to Sunday school every week because That's What You Do, and because my whole hometown was very southern Baptist, i never questioned the veracity of its teachings much... until they ran a whole weekly series on "why [x] is wrong," where [x] is some other group

e.g., we had a week on why Mormons are wrong, and i didn't bat an eye because i hadn't even known Mormons existed until that moment

then we had a week on why Muslims are wrong, and that... bothered me, because i had a friend who was Muslim, and she was just objectively a better person than me, and i was like "any universe where she goes to hell and i don't seems really fucked up"

then we had a week on why EVOLUTION was wrong, and that just absolutely threw me, because while i hadn't thought about evolution much (i think i was in fourth grade or so), it seemed common-sense? scientists thought highly of it? "adaptation over time" just seems logical?

so i went to the public library every day after school for like a week, read some Darwin and some science books, and came back to my Sunday school teacher with, like, an itemized list of objections to the whole "evolution is wrong" thing.  and he came up with some standard Answers In Genesis rebuttals, and i did more research and came back the next week with more science, and we repeated this a few times until he was like "lua, you just gotta take some things on faith"

which.  lmao.  full existential crisis time, because no matter how hard i thought, i couldn't *not* believe in the science, but i also didn't want to go to hell, so i was like "maybe if i believe SUPER HARD i will SOMEDAY be able to unbelieve the condemn-me-to-hell bits"

so i decided to become

VERY CHRISTIAN

and my frantic googling for shit like "proof of god" and "god and evolution" *eventually* broke me out of the Answers In Genesis circles of the internet, and into some decent Christian apologia, like, think First Things and various Catholic bloggers.  and there, i found some way to square my gut sense that evolution was right, with a spiritual worldview.

like, i remember finding some blogger who said:

"young earth creationists get tripped up when they try to explain stars that are millions of light-years away, and end up basically arguing that God's tricking us somehow, and—no!  my God lets you believe in the evidence of your eyes, my God does not demand that you make yourself ignorant or stupid, my God expects you to use your brain"

and i just started crying at my computer, because no one had ever said "using your brain is Good and part of God's will," i was like *finally* here's someone who won't tell me i'm going to hell for just *thinking* about things

(st. augustine does a much better riff on a similar theme, fwiw, but i only found him later)

still, it was an uneasy fit, because, the more i learned and read about world history, the more it seemed... weird... that the One And Singular Path To Salvation was... the successor to some niche desert cult... which didn't even occur at the *beginning* of written history, like, it was all predated by that whole Mithraism thing, etc... and like, sure, i could trot out all the standard theological talking points for why Actually This Makes Perfect Sense, but gut-level-wise, the aesthetics just seemed kinda dumb!  and no level of talking myself out of it made that feeling go away!

so at this point i started referring to myself as a

CHRISTIAN AGNOSTIC

i mean, not aloud.  i still lived in southernbaptistopia and i didn't want, like, my hair stylist to tell me i was a horrible person.  but in my *head* i called myself Christian agnostic and it felt right.

and i started church-hopping, which honestly was really fun, would recommend to anyone at any point.  i visited the fire-and-brimstone baptist church, the methodist church, the episcopalians, the universal unitarians, etc.

unfortunately, while this gave me *some* new perspectives, each of the places either had the same shitty theology as my old megachurch (i remember the *acute* sense of despair i felt when i was starting to jive with a methodist church... only for the dumbass youth minister to start going on about evolution), or, they just lacked any sense of the *sacred*.  like, the Church of Christ churches, with their a capella services, *definitely* had it; i felt more God there in one service than i did in a lifetime of shitty Christian rock at the megachurch.  but their beliefs were even *more* batshit, so.  big L on that one.

having failed to find a satisfactory church, i was basically

AGNOSTIC/ATHEIST

by the time i went to college, but honestly pretty unhappy about it; while it was harder than ever for me to actually *connect* with the divine, i didn't like thinking that my previous experiences of the divine were total lies.  because my shitty evangelical church, for all its faults, could not *completely* sabotage the sense of God's presence.  there were real moments in that church where i do believe i experienced something divine.  mostly mediated by one particular youth minister, who in hindsight was the only spiritual teacher in that church who didn't seem a bit rotten inside, but!  it was something!

so when i happened upon a bunch of writings on the now-defunct shii.org (that's the bit that makes me look WILDLY ignorant, lol), i was utterly captivated.

said author was a previous archdruid of the Reformed Druids of North America, an organization that was formed in the 1960s to troll the administration of Carleton College (there was a religious-service-attendance requirement; they made their own religion; their religion had whiskey and #chilltimes for its services).  however, this shii.org dude seemed to take it pretty seriously.  he was studying history of religion and blogged a lot about his studies, both academic and otherwise.  while RDNA had started out as a troll, that didn't mean they hadn't *discovered* something real in the process, he said.

this, already, was going to be innately appealing to me; i've got a soft spot for wow-we-were-doing-this-ironically-but-now-it's-kinda-real? stuff in general.

in particular, shii.org’s discussions on the separation of ritual from belief was really interesting to me: most religions/spiritualities have *both*, but like, you can do a ritual without having the Exact Right Beliefs (if there even is such a thing!), and it can still be useful to you, it can have real power.  (he had a really lovely essay, speculating on the origins of religion as just a form of art, but that essay is now lost to the sands of time, alas.)

(note that i wouldn't really recommend seeking out *recent* writing by the shii.org guy; he kinda went full tedious neoreactionary-blowhard-who-reads-a-lot-of-Spengler at some point?  sigh.)

the shii.org guy led me to checking out a bunch of books on the history of neopaganism & also books by scholars of religion in general, and the more i read, the more excited i became.  and i started doing little ritual/meditation stuff here and there.

then i was fortunate enough to attend some events with Earthspirit (this was when i lived in Boston), which cemented my hippie dalliances into something more real.  the folks there, being from Boston, were all ridiculously overeducated (a sensibility that appeals to me), but also, being the kind of folks who drive out to a mountain in the middle of nowhere for a spiritual retreat, they tolerated a full range of oddities (everyone from aging-70s-feminist-wiccans to living-on-a-farm-with-your-bros-Astaru to dude-who-started-having-weird-visions-and-is-just-trying-to-figure-out-the-deal to Nordic-spiritualist-with-two-phds-from-Scandanavian-universities-on-the-subject, etc), which gave me a lot of room to explore different types of rituals, ceremonies, "magic", etc.

(polytheism in general lends itself well to this sort of easy plurality!  i can believe other people are experiencing something real with their gods, and i can be talking to a totally different set of gods, and that’s just all very compatible, etc)

anyway, i started calling myself

AGNOSTIC/DRUID

around then, because i knew i'd found *something*, something that felt like all the realest moments i'd ever had in nature, and all the realest moments i'd ever had in that shitty megachurch, but i wasn't quite ready to put a theology to it.

but, idk, you do the thing for a while, and you start encountering some things that you may as well call gods, and you realize you're in pretty deep, and you ditch the "agnostic" bit and just throw hands and start describing yourself as

SOME SORTA DRUID-NEOPAGAN-ANIMIST THING

because that's the most precise thing you can muster.  in particular, the druid bit resonates because nature's still very much at the center of my practice; the neopagan bit resonates because i'm not especially interested in reconstructing older traditions or being faithful to any actual pre-Christian traditions, and animist resonates because what i sometimes call gods seem to be tied pretty tightly to the land itself.  it's all very experiential; all this mostly means i'm some weird chick who sometimes grabs a car and drives out someplace very lonely and hikes for a while and does some hippie shit to try and talk with the land or the god or whatever is there.  and sometimes i come back from it changed, or refocused, or what-have-you, and hopefully i'm better for it.  i'm aware this makes me look a little ridiculous, and is an unsatisfying answer, sorry!

WRT YOUR SITUATION

i don't know you or your situation, obviously, but if i wanted to give former-me some advice to save her some angst, i'd say

-> Christendom itself is far wilder and more diverse than many churches lead you to believe.  if you still want to be Christian on some level, and it's just a shitty church that's convinced you the whole project is fucked, i'd honestly explore, i dunno, your nearest Quaker meeting.  they're invoking the Holy Spirit with regularity but they're not raging douchenozzles about it.

-> if you're specifically interested in druidism, i found John Michael Greer's "A World Full of Gods" really nice.  (caveat: Greer has *also* gone full right-wing nutjob these days, sigh, so like.  would not recommend a great swath of his writing.  but that one's good)

-> deciding that a just God wouldn't give me a brain and then ask me not to use it was hugely comforting to me.  like, that was the start of the whole process, that was what made me feel ok searching for other churches and trying to find something that fit.  obviously you should take this with 800 grains of salt, because obviously i'm no longer Christian, and thus maybe i'm just some poor misguided fallen soul, but... i still kinda believe that!  maybe if you can make yourself believe that, it'll seem less scary?

idk, happy to answer more questions, sorry for the long ramble, hope it helped~

[queer-crusader]

How do you think Silver & Flint's relationship would have evolved if things hadn't ended the way they did in S4? How do you think things would have progressed through time? I tend to think about the what ifs a lot. I'm just curious what your thoughts are on it.

OOFT. I mean i have many thoughts! It’s... very hard to say really. Because i think one thing Black Sails does incredibly well is the way it builds a story and a character. Many choices made in this show are so dependent on what the characters want and who they intrinsically are and how they influence each other (willingly/knowingly or not), and i feel like there are many very complex interwoven roads that led them to the conclusion they got to. Which is one of the many reasons the finale felt like such a tragedy; you know things are going to end badly because you kind of see it coming. And dear god it does hurt, even with Flint being reunited with Thomas.

So. I think there are two ways to answer this question, and you can sort of divide them into canon-ish versus fanon wish. These may not exactly be clearly indicated bc like i said i have Many Thoughts, and i apologise in advance 😅 Another thing i’ll be looking at here is something we had to lay out for our characters when i studied acting - the goals/objectives/motivations of the character, and their emotional/mental state. None of this is meant to be critical against any character. I simply adore analyising them and the paths of the story, and I love each and every character i talk about here deeply.

So, looking at that finale. There’s several things that i could take from what you say about things not ending the way they did - for now, i’m looking at the confrontation between Flint and Silver in the woods, where Silver forces Flint to quit his war and reunites him with Thomas.

Firstly, let’s analyse what we get from the canon, and what i believe motivates these characters to bring them to the point they end up at. There’s that famous line i think of Silver where he says he doesn’t know anymore where he ends and Flint begins - their thinking patterns have become so intertwined, they basically share a braincell. The tricky thing about this is, just because he and Flint think similarly, share tactics, and a knowledge of how to use people in their means, just because they understand each other well, doesn’t mean they share opinions and morals. Flint especially seems to forget this. He believes Silver is with him in his cause to end Imperial rule. But from Silver’s final actions, it’s clear Silver values his personal wants and needs above that of this abstract crowd of people. He’s not oppressed - or hasn’t felt the effects of Imperial/religious oppression (as far as we canonically know) like Flint and Madi have. And that means he doesn’t have the same drive. He’s driven by his personal connections to these people, i believe, purely from his own point of view. Like, i suspect he struggles to place himself in the shoes of Madi or Flint to feel their pain and motivation. He can see it, he just... doesn’t fully grasp it. (There’s also a question of whether he wishes to, but i feel nowhere NEAR qualified on answering that, nor do i think the canon gives us enough material to give a perfectly cut & dry answer.)

So you have this big miscommunication. Flint believes that, because he and Silver have basically become one shared braincell, they have the same goals, while Silver is still driven from a point of selfishness. (Side-note: there was a moment in the show he became selfless! He wouldn’t give up his crew when faced with torture from Vane’s quartermaster! But then he lost a leg over it and it seemed to dampen that selflessness. I think from there on, moments where he seems to be motivated by the good of the crew come instead from an internal need to belong and be loved more so than a genuine sense of brotherhood. That brotherhood may still have been there, but i think he might have suppressed that instinct a little and instead let the more selfish needs take more of a front seat. Understandable and not bad/evil, like that’s super valid of him. But my point is, he’s not exactly ready to fight for another man’s cause he doesn’t have as much of a personal emotional profit in, especially when he knows it’ll end in certain death for everyone he cares about and he knows cares about him.)

So that’s sort of where the characters are mentally in that climax. I may be skirting details and summarising a bit hastily, but it’s also been a GOOD while since i’ve watched season 4, so i apologise. Flint (and Madi as well - she plays an equally important role i think!) is fuelled by a mix of rage born from oppression/discrimination, and a protectiveness for others who may suffer the same fate. Silver meanwhile is fuelled by a need much closer to home - to be loved and to keep those he cares for and deems important to him alive and around. I’ve framed it as their emotional drive, but really it is also their goal, their objective in that finale. Flint and Madi are looking to burn down an oppressive system while Silver... isn’t. For him, their goals stand directly in the way of his. And by the end of the show, he’s gained enough power to prevail in his objective, cancelling out those of Flint and Madi.

So, could it have gone differently? I think, if we wanna play with canon and keep it as close to canon as possible... It seems almost impossible. These people’s goals just do not align. (There’s that sweet sweet tragedy again.) So what you need for it to go differently in short is for one of, if not several, of these people to change their goal. But we’re talking their MAIN objective, their main driving force at this point in the show - so like, the chances of that are slim. ESPECIALLY if we’re talking about the canon characters. After all, for that, the characters would need to look inside themselves and fucking face up to some of their issues and work on them. (This is something which these characters are not very prone to do, bc jesus it’s a mess in there and if that were me i’d preferably not turn introspective either and be forced to look at all that.)

So if we wanted Flint to change his goal, he’d need to come to terms with the Empire being untouchable - which is bullshit bc like my man has a POINT, just because they seem to be able to be brought down doesn’t mean they ain’t - and to accept the homophobia and oppression they treated him and Thomas with, which, yeah fuck that, absolutely not, his rage and his goals are valid as FUCK. If we wanted to change Madi’s - lmao like listen i understand wanting her and Silver happy together bc we ship EVERYTHING in this house, but she’s poc and proper royalty and wants to end slavery. We ain’t touching her goals. So that just leaves Silver. Silver would need to face a part of himself that keeps him from placing Flint’s goals, or Madi’s goals, over his own. (I suspect we circle back to that insecurity and need to be loved, which defo stems from whatever trauma he swears doesn’t affect who he is today.) So for that he’d uhh... need therapy. And a shit tonne of it. But then you still have the issue that Flint and Madi will likely fight their war (bc they DESERVE IT), which may lead to what Silver considers inevitable - that they will die early and horribly, and he ends up all alone.

So, looking at playing with the canon-ish to change things? It’s gonna end in tragedy. There’s doesn’t seem any other way about it, i fear; not with the way these characters were written, with who they are and what drives them and what they want. If it doesn’t end in tragedy in one way, then almost certainly in another.

So what are our other options? What if we look at the fanon wish - whether it’s silverflint, or silvermadi, or madisilverflint, or just to have these kids be fucking happy? Well, you know what? Maybe it DOESNT have to end up in tragedy. Maybe, if Silver does align himself with the goals of the people he loves - after learning to communicate and place himself in other people’s shoes and prioritise the needs of his loved ones and compromising and all that jazz (god this boy needs therapy that only the fanon can likely give him, rip) - he could join them in their war. And maybe, his genius and creativity and quick wit will in fact propel their cause forward and help so much, none of them dies an early gruesome death. It’s not impossible! It just requires that sweet sweet character growth he doesn’t get the opportunity for in canon.

Another option, and this one is perhaps a little more plausible if the show had no episode limit or a desire to end in tragedy and “align” itself with “history” (they’ve played fast and loose with real history i’ve learned, and like,, it’s a story about fictional characters so why did it have to align itself with history?? Okay fine, as a prequel to Treasure Island, it still needed to end in tragedy for Silver bc we know where he ends up. Were there no Treasure Island and no rules and we could do what we wanted with the show and write a new ending, then what?). This one is more popular, you see it in loads of fics and i like it a lot. Silver sends Flint to the plantation. Flint and Thomas break out and get their war anyway. They’re pissed at Silver for a bit for being a selfish dick shitting on Flint’s dreams, but like,, it’s not as if it stopped Flint. (We can even look at it like Silver knew they’d probably fight their war and have better odds with Thomas in the mix, giving them a better opportunity - but like, that’s just a fun headcanon to play with that i don’t think aligns with what he explicitly states to want in canon.) And then, after some years, everyone learns to communicate and talk things out and maybe, maybe, Silver grows a bit and things become healthier between him and Flint.

Listen, the moral of the story is this. I love all the ships in this show. I think they’re all neat, and i love the different iterations in which people bring them to life and try to align them with canon. Do i think that with the canon we’ve been given, silverflint could happen? Maybe. Would it be healthy?? I mean... Probably not 😅 but like, that doesn’t prevent me from shipping it. (That’s not the point of shipping - sometimes you just wanna see that sweet sweet chemistry pay off, even tho u know it ain’t healthy. The characters are fictional. It’s okay. No-one will get hurt - apart from maybe you if you end up romanticising it and taking that into real life but ooft that’s a whole other kettle of fish.) But god, that’s the fucking JOY of fanfics ya know?? It may also be why i enjoy writing my modern au so much xD therapy is an option, and canon means even less than usual. All im saying is, when it comes to the relation between silver and flint, the fan community are a fucking godsend. You want them to be friends?? We got fics for that! Want them to bone? SO many fics for that! Want a sort of father-son role?? Uhh nowhere near enough fics for that, but the fandom’s still active so you never know! Partners in crime?? Hell YEAH that has potential, even in canon i think if u just stretch out fan-written episodes far enough!! (God can you imagine the POTENTIAL?? Ignore the war, the grittiness, the drama. Get me some pirate hijinks where the stakes are low but they’re still sharing a braincell.)

(Hmm. Now i need to add another idea to my WIP list lmao xD)

Anywayyy, hope this satisfies ur curiosity anon!!

[mydarlinginej]

read my full review of some girls do by jennifer dugan here.

In this YA contemporary queer romance from the author of Hot Dog Girl , an openly gay track star falls for a closeted, bisexual teen beauty queen with a penchant for fixing up old cars.

Morgan, an elite track athlete, is forced to transfer high schools late in her senior year after it turns out being queer is against her private Catholic school’s code of conduct. There, she meets Ruby, who has two hobbies: tinkering with her baby blue 1970 Ford Torino and competing in local beauty pageants, the latter to live out the dreams of her overbearing mother. The two are drawn to each other and can’t deny their growing feelings. But while Morgan–out and proud, and determined to have a fresh start–doesn’t want to have to keep their budding relationship a secret, Ruby isn’t ready to come out yet. With each girl on a different path toward living her truth, can they go the distance together?

my review:

I loved Jennifer Dugan’s previous two books, so I was so excited for her next release! I think she portrays messy teen relationships so well, which is also important because we need to see more of these with LGBTQ+ protagonists. Some Girls Do follows a lesbian track star and a closeted pageant-queen mechanic as they navigate their feelings for each other.

After coming out at her religious private school and being expelled, Morgan is ready for a fresh start at her new school at the end of her senior year. Her fresh start gets off to a bad one, however, when Ruby nearly runs her over. The two dislike each other, especially when Ruby almost runs her over a second time, but they gradually get to know each other.

Morgan and Ruby are going through such opposite experiences, so it was interesting to follow both characters. Coming out at her school led to a huge scandal, but Morgan doesn’t want to hide her sexuality anymore. At her new school, she joins the Pride Club and befriends other out LGBTQ+ teenagers, as well as some other track girls. I liked reading about her opening up to her friends, particularly Aaron, who is empathetic to her (and Ruby’s) experiences. I also liked reading about Morgan’s relationship with her parents and her older brother, who are super supportive!

read my full review here.

[unpopularly-opinionated]

I just watched that Chaos Walking movie with Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley. It was...interesting, I guess. The concept of men’s thoughts being audible is a neat concept, and I like that it wasn’t just audible but visible as well which made it sort of a ‘power’ that they were able to use to their benefit.

It was a bit awkwardly paced though and some of the character motivations I don’t think were established correctly. My understanding of this movie’s development is that it’s been in development for years which may have something to do with these issues, I don’t know.

It wasn’t a bad movie though, I mean how can I fault any movie where we catch brief out-of-focus shots of a nude Tom Holland? I can’t. Do more of that Hollywood.

Anyways, I’d say concept-wise, 8/10. Execution-wise? Mmmm...maybe a 6.5/10.

I wanna explain why I had the thoughts I had which goes into spoilers so beware below if you plan to see it.

I’ll start with the pacing issue. The second act of this movie doesn’t really feel like it fits, or if it does fit, it’s almost as if there is a missing act in between the second and third acts. The first act does reasonably well to establish who Todd (Tom Holland) is, the concept of men’s thoughts being audio-visual, the fact that all of the women are dead, and it’s where we start to get a weird suspicion that the women might not have actually been killed by aliens as the Mayor claims. It’s also where we meet Viola (Daisy Ridley) and the ‘plot’ sort of starts with Todd needing to bring Viola to this different settlement where she’ll presumably be safe.

The second act however feels more like a stepping stone into what was supposed to be a third act before the fourth and final act, but it’s as if the third act got cut out of the movie which makes not only the final act of the film feel weirdly misplaced, but it also makes the second act feel almost pointless.

Now, the second act is what informs us on several key details. 1) we meet the “Spackle” who are the aliens that supposedly killed all of the women, and 2) by the end of the second act, we learn that it wasn’t actually the Spackle who killed the women, it was the men from their settlement.

There are several internal problems with the second act, but the biggest issue with it is that it sets up Todd and Viola to go to another settlement called Haven to reach their goal of finding somewhere where Viola can contact her people on the second colony ship. But the final act of the movie doesn’t seem to actually take us to Haven, and instead takes us to the first colony ship where there is no settlement, but there is a transmitter on the broken down and salvaged for parts colony ship that somehow still works which she uses to contact the second colony ship....and then the movie ends.

It feels like there needed to be another act in between where they actually found Haven and presumably they would’ve told them to go look for a transmitter inside the colony ship, but I have to imagine the writers couldn’t figure out a way to have a climactic battle at the end of the movie if there was a whole settlement of people who could’ve fought them off, I guess.

I know a lot of that didn’t make much sense, but it’s difficult to explain without spending hours describing the entire plot of the film. TL;DR: the movie felt like it was missing another act.

As for the character issues I had, I couldn’t quite figure out the Preacher or the Mayor’s characters. Outside of Todd, the Preacher is the first character we meet and he’s established immediately as some kind of antagonist, I guess. He shoves Todd at the beginning for no real reason, but then just leaves. Then we meet the Mayor who we immediately are given the impression is the bad guy of the movie, and he is.

The issue I had in the first act was that I actually thought the Preacher was going to be the “crazy old religious black man” that everyone in town makes fun of but was secretly the wise old man who was going to set Todd on the right path. The only reason I thought this was because the movie made it clear that it was trying to establish the Mayor as the bad guy, but then it also established that the Preacher and the Mayor were not on the same team, which made it slightly confusing.

Their motivations in the movie don’t help to rectify this much either. For most of the movie, we’re led to believe the Mayor killed all the women in the settlement. We’re never given a reason as to why, other than because women’s thoughts aren’t audio-visual, which pissed off the men, so they killed all the women. But then we learn that it was actually the Preacher that killed them all, because he believed that women’s thoughts weren’t audio-visual because they had no souls, so he killed them all. But then we learn that actually the Mayor did kill all of the women. So we’re left wondering who the fuck killed the women, the Preacher or the Mayor, and if both of them want them dead, why are they enemies?

And to be fair to the film, they do establish one significant difference in motivations between the Preacher and the Mayor. The Mayor wants to use Viola to lure her colony ship to the planet so they can kill everyone on board and take it over, whereas the Preacher just wants to kill all women because they have no souls. But these motivations are completely lost because A) Viola’s goal is literally to bring the colony ship to the planet anyways, so there’s no reason to need to kidnap her and force her to do what she was already going to do and B) this still doesn’t explain why the Preacher and the Mayor are enemies.

If the Mayor killed all those women and the Preacher also killed all those women, then why are they enemies? My initial thought was that the Preacher wanted to kill her immediately without bothering to let her contact her ship, whereas the Mayor wanted to let her contact the ship first...but this still doesn’t explain why the Mayor wanted to capture her, or why he didn’t just tell the Preacher he could kill her after or any of that.

ALSO, what the fuck was Nick Jonas’ role in this movie? Like at all? We see him and Todd fight early in the movie, and then he spends the rest of the film being a huge bitch whenever he talks to his dad, the Mayor, and then nothing. This goes with the pacing issue, I thought Todd was going to end up killing the Mayor and then Nick Jonas’ character was going to run at him in a blind rage or something and maybe they’d both die or it’d be a fake out situation, I don’t know, but he seemed weirdly too important while simultaneously being a huge nobody.

And again, the movie just ends. It’s super abrupt and comes out of nowhere. What happened to literally everyone who wasn’t the Mayor? What happened to Nick Jonas? I get the weird cliff-hanger ending regarding the colony like “ooo, will they learn to deal with the audio-visual thoughts or not, who knows” but you’ve gotta at least close the threads in the movie itself.

[lotusik]

How I became passionate about folk magic. (July 23, 2020)

I hadn’t had very much interest in folk magic previously. I was always more interested in theurgy, everything to do with uniting with the divine, and I suppose I thought I didn’t need any other sort of magic. Or perhaps that as long as I was working hard on a spiritual path, nothing more was necessary. I admit that attitude is an awfully good example of the privilege experienced by a white woman born in Canada. Many others that came to North America, particularly those with brown skin have had a much different story to tell. How I did finally develop an interest in folk magic was actually through genealogy. My family lines come from various places in Europe, and one day doing research I discovered that one of those lines landed smack in the middle of the Pennsylvania Deutch (Dutch) community. Until then I hadn’t even known of any ancestors in America, I thought they had all come from Europe straight to Canada. Luckily for me that lineage was already well researched in books and the like due to the historical import of that community so I had much to delve into. At some point an 1820 book by Johnn Georg Hohman (John George), a member of that Pennsylvania Dutch community, came into my awareness. It was titled in the original German; Der Lange Verborgene Freund, oder, Getreuer und Christlicher Unterricht fur Jedermann, Enthaltend: Wunderbare und Probmassige Mittel und Kunste, Sowohl fur die Menschen als Das Vieh (The Long Hidden Friend, or, True and Christian Instructions for Everyone. Comprising Wonderful and Well Tested Remedies and Arts, for Men as well as for Livestock.) Later titles would incorporate the term pow-wow and the practice often was called pow-wowing (or powwowing), though it has nothing to do with the Indigenous peoples of America. The name was appropriated from the Algonquian languages and given negative connotations by the Puritan missionaries, becoming a sort of general term for magical workings. The book is often now published as ‘The Long Lost Friend’ or as ‘Pow-wows or The Long Lost Friend’.

This book contained spells, charms and all sorts of herbal and home remedies. Some of the spells in the book came from a German spell-book called das Romanus-Büchlein, (The Little Book of the Gypsies), along with some contributions from Albertus Magnus, or more accurately, pseudo-Albertus Magnus (works attributed to Albertus but more likely written by disciples). Other items in the book were quite unique to the oral tradition of the Pennsylvanian Dutch community itself. The healers that use those practices are called Braucherei, a female practitioner is called a Braucherin and a male a Braucher. They may also be known as a powwow doctor or a powwower. And yes, they absolutely still practice today! I’ve seen hexmeister used as well, or hex-doctor and that seems to be synonymous in some places with powwow but as far as I can see that was not very popular as it more specified working against illnesses caused by grudges and malicious intent. I’ve also seen the term used more often in relation to the painters of hex signs on barns and I am not entirely clear if that is part of Braucherei or something somewhat separate. There are some excellent books on hex signs but I’ve not been able to get copies sadly. All of this really got me thinking a lot about how perhaps my own ancestors may have practiced this form of folk magic and healing. Further, I started thinking how folk magic may well have been part of my own family’s traditions through my other ancestry lines also; Slavic, Celtic & Scandinavian. And thus, a real interest in these practices became sparked. Unfortunately due to the way Christianity swept across the world absorbing what it chose to and wiping out the rest, I have found it very difficult to find very much about original beliefs and practices in Slavic countries. Sometimes I find more in neighbouring countries rather than the ones I am most interested in due to my own ancestry. Though looking at the big picture, there is so much influence in individual countries from elsewhere anyways, for example the influence of the Celts is absolutely huge in many parts of the world. Borders in so many places have often moved many times, countries have been ruled by various different rulers and migration often imports new beliefs and systems into established cultures as well. The more I’ve looked at all these lines of history, the more convoluted it becomes to me. Researching about Hohman’s book I learned a lot of interesting history about it as well as about the influence it had on inhabitants of the Appalachians and on Hoodoo as well. The book was originally published for the Pennsylvania Dutch themselves, but later English editions ended up being marketed through Jewish mail order catalogues. For African-Americans in need of supplies for their magic, they had to be resourceful and make do with what they could access. Jewish suppliers soon found out selling Jewish religious items and hoodoo supplies to African-Americans was great for business. This led Hoodoo to be influenced by a variety of sources and practices. And one of those sources was Hohman’s Long Lost Friend. Learning about the influence of ‘The Long Lost Friend’ on Hoodoo led me to, obviously, learning as much as I could about hoodoo! There is a lot of incorrect information out there, but there is a lot of accurate stuff as well that can be found digging around on the internet thanks to some amazing practitioner-teachers. Just before Covid-19 started spreading across the world, I decided to take a chance on something called a “Steady Money Service” offered by The Hoodoo Queen in Mobile, Alabama. [The website is linked below.] All I had to do was send my $10 and I was in! I can’t say I was super expectant of results, though I was hopeful. I had watched many of Queen Co.’s videos and the information shared in them really rung true as authentic to me. Besides, it was only $10 and I figured it it well worth it as a first foray into hoodoo. But alas, Covid struck, and so I really thought there wasn’t any hope at all this ‘steady money’ service had even the slightest chance of working. In fact I thought the exact opposite was going to occur. So I felt pretty discouraged. Still, I did exactly what was detailed out to do on my end after the service when I received my ‘dirt’ in the mail (including laying dirt at the threshold of my house and burying an American dollar bill in my back yard after fastening it down with nails) and sure enough, I have had nothing but steady money since that time! While I am an open minded person, I have always been someone that wants some ‘proof’ as well. Even if that proof is only my own intuition or ‘knowing’, I need there to be something. And this to me, was my proof. I am very sure this service from Queen Co. helped open a pathway for money for me. Since that time, I have been studying everything I can of various folk magic practices from all over the world, and I have found they have so much in common. Yet in so many other ways they are marvelously unique. Tied to the cultures they come from but connected through all by the need we all have to get by on this planet the best way we can. I enjoy so much the creativity in these practices, and the amazing resilience of the people they came from.                                                                  ----------------- For Queen Co. The Hoodoo Queen, go here! https://conjuresouth.com/ For a lot more information on the Pennsylvania Dutch and powwowing please check out this link which has an astounding amount of research by Patrick. J. Donmoyer and also contains some really amazing images of artifacts as well. It’s where much of what I shared here came from as he has the best research I’ve seen. : https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56829c58a2bab87f93ee4d6a/t/58c178ef3e00be4c00782168/1489074429798/Reduced+Size+File+-+Exhibition+booklet+-+Powwowing+in+Pennsylvania.pdf Further I’d recommend the works of Don Yoder as well as the book The Red Church by C.R. Bilardi. For a more extensive history on Hoodoo and the contribution The Long Lost Friend had to those practices, please check out cat yronwode’s website luckymojo.com, its well worth your time!These two pages specifically: https://www.luckymojo.com/powwows.html https://www.luckymojo.com/hoodoohistory.html#admixtures

[will-o-the-witch]

apologies if you’ve already answered something similar, but i know awhile ago you stopped identifying as a judeo-pagan(i think the term was? i can’t remember exactly but basically just referring to how you worked with the theoi while also being jewish) and i was wondering if that was a more personal change, like it was just something that didn’t fit your personal life anymore. or if something in your experience led you to feel it’s not actually possible to be both jewish and pagan? i kinda feel like i’m stuck in the middle of a spirituality tornado rn and am very curious regarding jewish opinions on the ability to be both. thank you :)

Howdy hey! For me it was largely a personal change. I really sat down and reflected on my path and what was/wasn’t working for me, what I needed out of a path and what I was getting out of each element of my practice. I realized that the Jewish parts were clicking, and the Pagan parts were starting to feel more like a sense of obligation/shame that I wasn’t doing more and distracting me from that real religious connection. So just straight Judaism (with a very witchy, animistic, henotheistic bent to it of course, I’m still me) ended up being more compatible with my needs. :) That said, wrestling with paganism and Judaism was always still a crunchy spiritual puzzle that I never quite settled on an answer for. I won’t say there ISN’T an answer, I could just never find one that I was personally satisfied with for whatever reason. Juggling the two can also end up being super alienating in both directions, which makes it harder. Other people have pitched their own arguments for it in every which way and seem comfortable with their practice, so who am I to judge, you know? So it may or may not have been possible for me but other people feel completely at home in it. But wrestling with theology and constantly debating with yourself and with the Divine is the pinnacle of Jewish tradition, lol! 

[mimzy-writing-online]

Hey!! I was wondering if you had any advice for a character concept I've been playing with? :) long story short, my character wasn't born blind, but throughout the story she progressively becomes blind from cataracts- cortical vision impairment to be exact. Is this inherently a bad concept? I really don't want to misrepresent this, and the last thing I want is to make people mad about it. Is there a way I should go about this? Thanks!!

Later message from same Anon: Hey! Just following up on my ask of writing a blind character in the Victorian era- sorry if I missed it

Note: in a message between the first and third, anon added that this story takes place in the Victorian era.

You certainly did not miss it, I’ve just been lazy (struggling) with blog maintenance and have been procrastinating answering several asks.  Historical fiction is out of my area of expertise, so this required more research than general advice.

Also, my first and second attempts at an answer were eaten away by computer/tumblr difficulties, so I had to rewrite a lot.

I think it is a fantastic idea to have your character go blind slowly over time. It is also ambitious, so it is something you need to be careful with, but it’s totally doable.

So the era throws me a little because I’ve never had much practice with historical fiction and history wasn’t a fave subject of mine. Most of my research into blind history has been after World War I, because the sudden surge of blinded veterans changed the course of history for the blind community. This and technology overall led to those huge changes.

So I did a little reading up on the recent evolutions of blindness and the world’s general understanding of it in the 1800s.

Conclusion: society was shit with disability, but I already knew that. There were some remarkable inventions and innovations for blindness in this century, which I will get to later.

 So this post will be: 1. The more personal aspects of going blind over time (instead of all at once) such as acceptance vs denial, life changes, and internalized ableism. 2. Speculating on society’s perception of the blind. 3. Innovations for the blind in that era and what comes after.

 So, part one. The Emotional…

As someone who has slowly lost vision over the course of years and has no idea how far this will progress, I can tell you that it’s an agonizing process of realization, denial, understanding, acceptance, adaption.

Realizing you’re going blind comes in small pieces that eventually add up to become a puzzle. And for this reason, adaption follows a similar pattern.

You identify a problem, feel conflicted about this change, wonder if you should ignore or investigate, and regardless of which path you take, you find a new way to adapt.

I’m going to use an example of my process through this, so you can see the actual thought patterns and how they circle between “this isn’t a problem” – “wait this is a problem” – “no I’m fine!” – “this is a problem.” – “I’m fine, what am I complaining for” – “I made this change and now my life is 100x easier??? Who knew? Why didn’t I do this sooner?”

Example from my life: Light is bright. That hurts but I’m fine. I get sunglasses. The pain with bright light is getting worse. Okay, that’s concerning, maybe I should talk to a doctor. Doctor says I’m fine but now I’m thinking I’m not okay. Why are my eyes doing this? Why do I hurt? Oh, and now bright lights at night are becoming a problem, and I get more headaches associated with light. I could wear sunglasses at night and indoors, but society has given me a negative and judgemental opinion of that, so I don’t want to do it. Best friend pushes me to give up on that negative view for the sake of my health. Finally I listen and life feels much better, but I’m still a little uncomfortable with this change. I feel very blind with my sunglasses, but that’s the only way to not feel pain. And now I feel blind when I’m not wearing any light protection, but I’m in pain this way. What’s wrong with me?

And this is just my internal argument with sunglasses and light sensitivity, from age 17-22. On the other side is my struggle with “do I need a cane” from age 21-22, which goes like this-

It’s August and I’m walking through a semi-familiar but gigantic and ridiculously crowded park with a group of friends. It’s bright out and I need to wear my sunglasses. And now I’m realizing there is a dilemma. I can’t see. My sunglasses are too dark to see. But going without is painful and just as bad vision wise. BUT I CAN’T SEE! I’m scared, I’m going to run into someone or something, I’ll get lost or separated from my friends and not be able to find them. I can’t see curbs or pillars or people and the only thing keeping me safe is holding onto K, who knows my current vision situation when no one else does

And I think to myself- this day would be so much easier if I had a cane.

But I haven’t needed one before, and I don’t ‘normally’ need one. Just every time I go outside on a sunny day. I don’t need it all the time, so I can’t have one, I’m fine.

But these things keep happening, where I’m outside and terrified but I think I’m still “sighted” and my only problem is some light sensitivity and not-super-great sunglasses. My glasses let me see 20/20 (or they did, which they did not a year later) so I definitely don’t need a cane at all.

Young past self, you were so wrong. You needed that.

Eventually I had a breaking point when one year later I’m seeing 20/50 with best correction (so, by legal definitions I’m not even visually impaired yet) but I’m terrified of leaving my house and can’t travel alone and am a literal danger to myself because I can’t see and can’t tell people I can’t see because of social anxiety and internalized ableism-

And the breaking point was that I finally got seriously hurt because I was in a situation where I couldn’t see and wasn’t brave enough to ask my current company to be a sighted guide. That’s the day I ordered a cane, and when it came two weeks ago, I finally remembered what it’s like to not be so terrified for my life every time I left my home.

Your character will over time find problems with her daily life that she didn’t have before, and she’ll deal with each one individually, but with all of them will usually be a repeating thought pattern that is unique to her. It depends on her internalized ableism and society’s ableism (and that era is full of it) and accommodations available to them at the time (also not great).

She’ll solve each problem at a different point that may coincide with other problems and yet still seem like entirely separate problems to them. Like how I wouldn’t relate my need for sunglasses and my need for a cane at the same time because they felt like separate battles to me with their own timelines and similar but still different thought processes.

You will have to decide on a case by case basis what accommodations or accessibility she can have at that time.

 Society’s view on blindness:

It’s shit.

It’s not great now, in the world of information available at your fingertips. It’s desperately worse in history.

 (TW: abuse of disabled people mentioned -thoroughly- in the next two paragraphs)

Everyone with a disability was treated like shit. Sensory disabilities (Deaf or Blind or Deafblind people) and mental illness were treated the worst. There is historical religious persecution against them, saying that they were made ill by the devil or a vengeful God. Which lead to abuse. They were seen as helpless or unproductive, defective, and so were treated as burdens upon their family and society. Because of this, abuse from parents and family members was horribly common for disabled people. Disabled people were often left in asylums by their family members because they were seen as a burden, where there was usually still more abuse to come.

There are still children with disabilities who are abused by their parents, families, care givers, or any facility they’ve been placed in. The cases of abuse are less, but by no means over.

 Ableism in general is just rampant and it’s only cured through the distribution of information. Most people (today) have never met a blind person in real life, had a conversation with one. Through the internet they can find information, but in pre-internet and media eras I can’t imagine how much ignorance runs about.

Most people think blindness is something that only happens with old age, birth defects, or tragic accidents. Or that blindness is obvious in a person. Not the case, as we both know, but certainly a cause for many misunderstandings.

 This section is where the development of technology and understanding of blind people begins, but there’s still some ugly history involving abuse of the disabled to come.

Technology and History

 (TW: abuse towards historical disabled people in next paragraph)

In 1785 the Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles, the world’s very first school for the blind was established in Paris, France. It was opened internationally to children who society had previously deemed unteachable. Valentin Haüy witnessed acts of bullying and cruelty done to blind hospice patients and it inspired him to attempt teaching a blind beggar. He taught the boy to read through raised letters (because Braille was not yet invented). The school he founded could better be described as a trade school, because its primary purpose was to teach work skills like letter press and weaving (going back to Valentin’s childhood, whose family worked as weavers)

Due to criminal activity (he was labeled as a terrorist related to the French Revolution and was a member of the Panthéon Club) he was forced to leave the school in 1802. He later moved to Russia (1806) and began a new school upon the request of Alexander I of Russia.

(TW: child abuse mention in next paragraph)

After his leave, the school had a change in leadership and location, and subsequently quality. Sébastien Guillié became the new director and was later forced to leave because of the inhumane conditions of the facility and welfare of the children. Those children lived in a French Revolution prison that was refurbished as an asylum/school for their education. It was cold and dirty. They were kept in the dark, only allowed to bathe once a month, and poorly fed. This went on until 1821 when he was forced to leave.

Louis Braille (the inventor of Braille) was a student of the school until Guillié’s reign of terror.

The school was later moved to Boulevard des Invalides, and it remains there today. Information with this school is hard for me to access. It doesn’t have the prettiest history, so I can only speculate how much was left out of the books to save the school, and what information I could access is in French.

However, back to Braille.

Braille was invented by Frenchman Louis Braille in 1824. Before his invention, he was taught to read through raised lettering, and he concluded that raised lettering was impractical because-

1.       It is difficult to read, the letters had to be printed in huge font to be fully felt out and printed on thick paper.

2.       Thick paper means higher quality, more expensive. Larger font means more paper is needed for a single text.

3.       This made it inaccessible due to expense and the sheer volume of a text.

4.       If today’s Braille books are hard to access and giant compared to traditional books, I can’t imagine how inaccessible those raised letter books really were

 Five years later The Perkins School for the Blind was founded in America, making education accessible to blind and deafblind children, and this time it focused on reading and mathematics, more education than trade school.

Though it would not have been possible for your character to attend the school herself, it could be possible that she became acquainted with a teacher or former student of either school, who might have passed on some O&M skills to her or some not so pleasant tales.

Side note: the Perkins Brailler (a typewriter machine for Braille) was developed by a wood working teacher at the Perkins School for the Blind – in 1951, so not applicable to your character’s time period, but I didn’t know this, so I must info-dump

 This is before the eugenics movement of 20th century America, when the belief that people with “poor breeding” should be prevented from breeding. The eugenics movement targeted not only the disabled, but lower class and people of color.

  The white cane as an accessibility tool was not “discovered” until the 1930’s by Philip Strong, who painted his walking stick white to make himself more visible. This piece of history is a little flimsy in my opinion. Techniques are discovered and lost and rediscovered all the time. You can’t prove he was the first person to “wave a stick” in front of him to find obstacles.

But he is credited for making the white cane something that could be a standard identifier to tell people (moving obstacles) “hey, I’m blind, don’t hit me with your loud vehicle” and made a movement of other people getting white canes to identify themselves.

I very much thank him for it, seeing as I’m so sighted-passing sometimes. If white canes weren’t standard everyone-must-know-what-this-means sort of thing, I think people would just watch me “wave a stick” around and think I’d lost my mind.

(TW: suicide of disabled character mention in next paragraph)

So when you see something like in Downton Abby (season 2) when Thomas and Sybil are trying to teach a blinded soldier how to use a cane to navigate… it could be possible, something that actually occurred to some people then. Although, now that I think about it, that character killed himself by the end of the episode and that still upsets me.

Downton Abby got the period-typical ableism right, I will give them that. Both the internalized ableism as well as how strangers treat you, they got that right. What they did to their disabled characters still bothers me (i.e. death and cure subplots)

(TW has been lifted, you made it past.)

But with World War 1, there was a huge number of blinded veterans entering the world and that did make way for big changes in the world of blindness-

Within a few decades guide dogs were being trained, white canes were becoming a thing, Schools for the Blind were thinking, “hey, maybe we should teach adults these skills too!” and life continued on until it eventually reached out modern world. Which, not applicable to your era, but I think it’s important to know what wasn’t available or common knowledge for your character.

If anyone has other information about historical fiction, the Victorian era, and historical ableism and disability, please feel free to reblog with your input and I’ll reblog it.

As always, this post can be found on my blog through the tags: reference, blind character, historical fiction

[atamascolily]

let’s talk about the Bene Gesserit

When Paul meets Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohamian of the Bene Gesserit, he identifies the order’s purpose right away: “Politics.” The Reverend Mother is surprised, and gives Jessica the side-eye to see if Jessica has spilled secrets, but Jessica denies it. I don’t know whether to believe Jessica or not here because Jessica has told Paul all kinds of things, but I’m going to assume Jessica is telling the truth here, and this is supposed to be yet another sign Paul is super-smart, super-observant, the Chosen One, etc, etc.

But I want to know: what does the rest of the galaxy think the Bene Gesserit do?

Pretty much every female character in Dune who’s not Fremen is Bene Gesserit, or at least has some degree of training from them. All of them are linked to powerful men: Jessica is a ducal concubine and mother of his heir; Margot is wife to Count Fenring (and presumably only allowed to marry him and be a Lady in her own right because the Count is a “eunuch” and can’t bear children); Irulan is a princess and the Emperor’s daughter. Even the Reverend Mother, once the superintendent of the Bene Gesserit school on Wallach IX, is now the Emperor’s Truthsayer. And the narrative goes out of its way to mention that Thufir Hawat specifically purchased Jessica for Duke Leto, and cleared her for the Atreides household.

So, are the Bene Gesserit seen as a religious order? A finishing school for ladies of the ruling class? Are they the futuristic equivalent of medieval nunneries, except with less embroidery and more manners? All of the above?

In reality, the Bene Gesserit are all-female order on a self-directed mission to provide “a thread of continuity in human affairs”. They do this by a secret breeding program, separating humans from “animals” by means of various tests (one of which Paul undergoes in the novel’s opening scene). The Bene Gesserit schools are filled with the (presumably female) offspring of this breeding program, as well as any other genetic lines they’re interested in manipulating. Many, like Jessica, are kept ignorant of their heritage by the higher-ups so they can secretly breed back into the line (ironically, a standard technique in animal breeding!). Apparently, the BG have found out the hard way that outright incest is a hard sell, so they keep the participants in the dark, which is... horrifying. The BG’s stated goal is to create a Kwisatz Haderach, a man who can look into the void that no BG [female] Truthsayer can see, “into both feminine and masculine pasts”.

Leaving aside the irony of an all-female organization seeking to create a man more powerful than they are, I don’t understand why the Kwisatz Haderach has to be male; it seems like a female Kwisatz Haderach who can see into both her male and female ancestral lines ought to be equally possible. Even if you argue that those male ancestral memories are inextricably linked to a Y chromosome or some other vaguely scientific rationale, it’s a) never explained anywhere in the book that I can recall, and b) Paul’s sister Alia will have this ability--and in fact will be haunted by at least one male ancestor to her extreme detriment. Maybe the BG are trying to create a male Kwisatz Haderach because they think men are easier to manipulate and control? Or do they not know what they’re talking about?

The Emperor knows the BG are useful; that’s why he has a Truthsayer and presumably was okay with them training his daughter, but he doesn’t seem to know the BG are manipulating his wife and concubines to make sure he has only daughters, so they can marry said daughters to a match of their choice. The BG orders Jessica to do the same thing, and she defies them because Duke Leto really, really wants a son. Does that mean the BG are always supposed to bear female children to keep the order going, or did Jessica and Irulan’s mother receive special orders on account of their positions? I don’t think this is ever made clear, and it bugs me.

I also don’t understand why the BG don’t... do something (anything!) when Jessica defies them and has Paul instead. Granted, Paul is the duke’s heir, he’s protected from assassins in general, but it seems like the BG might have had some way of influencing/punishing Jessica for her disobedience and they... don’t. At all. And I don’t get it. If Jessica’s act is so courageous--as Irulan later assess that it is in her history--what are the consequences?

The Reverend Mother sarcastically says Jessica defied the orders and had a son because she was arrogant enough to think she could produce the Kwisatz Haderach at last. Jessica says she suspected the possibility, but what made her think that? She doesn’t even know who her parents are! She hasn’t passed the final tests to be a Reverend Mother (and her defiance presumably knocked her off that track because the BG can’t trust her with that level of power), so why would she think HER SON would be the Chosen One? I don’t get it. Is Jessica being sarcastic here, too?

The Reverend Mother says Jessica did it because she loved Leto and didn’t want to disappoint him, which Jessica admits to. The Reverend Mother’s mostly angry because her plan was to wed an Atreides daughter to the Harkonnen heir and maybe put a stop to all the infighting between the two families (or compound it further? or for other reasons that only make sense when you learn who Jessica’s father really is?) Now with Paul as the heir, that’s not possible--because marriage is all about biological progeny, property, and heteronormativity in this book--and the Reverend Mother is annoyed mainly because the BG might lose both bloodlines in all the forthcoming violence.

I guess this begs the question of to what extent a BG agent is their own operative, and to what extent they are controlled/under the influence of the order as a whole? The Reverend Mother seems sympathetic to Jessica, saying, “Each of us must make her own path,” which implies some degree of independent agency. She also sees that Jessica has been teaching Paul the BG Way, and “I’d have done the same thing in your shoes and devil take the Rules”. And she encourages Jessica to train him in the Voice, because she thinks that’s the only way Paul’s going to survive the Harkonnen treachery to come (which she knows about because she’s presumably privy to much of the Emperor’s behind-the-scenes scheming with the Harkonnens).

And then the Reverend Mother walks out “with not another backward glance” and we don’t see her again until the final scene. “The room and its occupants already were shut from her thoughts.” And Jessica is freaked out by the fact the  Reverend Mother is crying as she walks away.

Why is she crying? Does she genuinely love Jessica as her “own daughter” as she claims, and she regrets that Jessica is either going to die or be a fugitive with a price on her head once the Harkonnen trap is sprung? Is she upset about what could have been, and wasn’t? Is she regretful of all the genetic material and possibilities, thousands of years of careful work and preparation obliterated by forces she has no intention of stopping? All of the above??

I don’t know why the Reverend Mother shows up to test Paul’s humanity at the beginning. Is it because she’s curious? Or does she have no choice given Paul’s lineage, and her suspicions/Jessica’s assertions that Paul really might be the Kwisatz Haderach? Did Jessica ask for it, because she knows Paul needs this test in order to move to the next level in his training and she’s not emotionally equipped to administer it? All of the above?

And the Reverend Mother looks straight at Paul, saying outright that she sees the possibility/potential for him to become the Kwisatz Haderach and walks away... why??

Conclusion: The Watsonian explanation is that the BG talk a mean game, but they’re not as smart as they think they are. The Doylist explanation is that Frank Herbert wanted to set up his plot just so and didn’t care if the BG looked stupid in the process.

But this got even weirder when I realized there was an appendix in my edition (which I had never read before) claiming to be an in-universe “Report on Bene Gesserit Motives and Purposes” written for Lady Jessica “immediately after the Arrakis Affair,” which comes to the exact same conclusions.

The report does clarify that the BG expected the child of Jessica and Leto’s daughter and Feyd-Ruatha Harkonnen to have a high probability of being the Kwisatz Haderach. So Jessica’s decision to skip ahead on the program a generation wasn’t such a long-shot after all.

Except: “For reasons she confesses have never been completely clear to her, the concubine Lady Jessica defied her orders and bore a son”. So Jessica herself doesn’t even know why she did it...!! But she must have known some of this, because why else would she train/test Paul the way she did, or admit to the Reverend Mother she thought it was possible in the first place?

The writer goes on to note that BG knew teenage Paul had prescient dreams, the Reverend Mother failed to mention that his humanity test had broken records in her report (not mentioned in the book itself!!);  that the BG knew that spice could amplify psychic powers... and did nothing to stop Jessica and Paul from going there and eating a fuckton of spice; and didn’t make the connection that the rumors of a guerilla prophet leader born of a Bene Gesserit mother and destined to be the savior might have some connection to the two people who had disappeared shortly beforehand (!!!); plus some stuff about their dealings with the Spacers’ Guild and the complications of a higher-order nexus they couldn’t see past, which ought to have alerted them that someone more powerful than they were was messing around with the future.

“In the face of these facts, one is led to the inescapable conclusion that the inefficient Bene Gesserit behavior in this affair was a product of an even higher plan of which they were completely unaware!”

And on that note, the report ends and I just... cannot believe that Herbert deliberately lampshades the BG’s incompetence--and then concludes that “God [aka the author] did it”. Because unless I missed something important and Paul meddles with the past somehow, I don’t know how else to interpret this...

I suppose this report might be written by an unreliable narrator--like every other in-universe document in this book--but then what is even the point if we never get any answers..?