#you get to be Christian By Default and i don't like it either. but when i see jewish people talking about it

[timeisacephalopod]

The pushback to the term "cultural Christianity" from atheists is real odd to me because, as someone who has been an atheist since 13, only ever went to church a handful of times never with my own family (made a note never to sleep over at that friends house on a Saturday again bc I HATED church it smelled like shit, was boring, pews are uncomfortable as fuck, and the religious people I knew were all wildly misogynistic and I've never been here for being told I was less of a person for being Born Like This), and generally had no actual connection to Christianity in a meaningful way but still only knows Christian mythology, has been steeped in Christian values I had to untangle, and my religious understandings are still deeply Christian.

Like Ive never paid attention to the bible, church, Jesus, Christian teachings, or whatever but if you asked me about any religion the one I'll reliably know the most about is Christianity. I don't know why atheists are offended by being called culturally Christian because they have bad blood with the religion because like sorry bruh that doesn't mean you're less indoctrinated by Christian values if the culture you grew up in is predominantly Christian. In fact I'd say that religion being this ubiquitous in the culture regardless of anyone's consent to exactly ONE religion being shoved down our throats is reason to team up with other religious folks who ALSO don't like being constantly evangelized to by the culture at large, not a reason to throw a fit because you don't like being tied to a religion that is so ingrained into the culture that shit like "oh my god" and "Jesus Christ" are common expressions of surprise regardless of how atheist you are. Like surely I'm not the only atheist to notice the shocking amount of cultural religious shit that works it's way into my life and speech despite having not set foot in a church since I was like 10, and I can't remember the last time I was in one before that.

Idk man cultural Christianity seems like a pretty damn useful term to describe my relationship with a religion I never fully bought into and then actively rejected as a child yet still hold weird connections to and knowledge of just because Christianity is so baked into the culture I grew up in like it or not. If you want to be mad, be mad at the Christians who stole your freedom from religion from you, not usually religious minorities who discuss cultural Christianity and how it damages them too.

[scientia-rex]

Sometimes people tell me I'm a good person. I'm not a good person by nature, or by default. I'm a good person because I've decided that it's important to me to act like one, on a daily basis, forever.

My actual nature is that I want power. I want power and I want my life to be easy and I want other people to be forced to be nice to me even if they hate me. I want other people to have to suck up to me, I want to watch people who I know hate me suffer through the indignity of having to suck up to me. I want to hurt people who hurt me. I want all of these things in the same exact deeply recognizable way that a gorilla or a chimpanzee does. I watch those documentaries and I recognize myself, intimately. The fact that I can behave like a good person in spite of that has taken me a long time and a lot of effort to achieve.

What you feel isn't as important for your "goodness" as what you do. And you get good at what you practice. So practice your skills at being polite, pleasant, kind. Practice gently interrupting negative behaviors--whether that's someone's negative behaviors directed towards themselves, or directed towards someone else. The idea that we have to be inherently without sin is such Christian garbage. It's psychological gibberish. We want things! We want everything! That is normal and human and the key is not acting on every bad feeling you have.

I have taken my insatiable desire for power and to manipulate people and I have used it for good. I have learned how to manipulate people into coming to the doctor and taking their blood pressure medication and being honest about their recreational substance use. I have taken my psychology education and I have used it to craft a persona that makes people feel at ease. I go home at the end of the day exhausted, because maintaining a persona for ten hours straight is exhausting, but I do it happy, because I manipulated the people I work with into feeling better and having brighter days. I manipulated my patients into feeling good about their achievements and recognizing where we need to do things differently.

The hard part is that when the mask slips, people find it not just off-putting but deeply upsetting. When I explain things like "I have thought very carefully about how I would conduct a career in domestic terrorism because I would genuinely like to bomb the headquarters of most American insurance companies, but I don't see a way to do it without getting caught and either killed or spending the rest of my life in prison, and at the moment I consider that an unacceptable outcome," people go from "ha ha! my wacky colleague" to "Jesus Christ, I didn't realize there was something actually wrong with you."

Anyway, don't make your kids read the extended works on Machiavelli at twelve, my dad thought he was helping me but all he accomplished was making me sad I'll never be a king.

[rhaenin-time]

No, House Targaryen is not inherently "doomed" by the very same flaws (and themes) that doomed the civilization that they left.

No, they're not fated to succumb to the Doom that they survived specifically because of the foresight that set them apart from everyone else who perished. Not only would it be terrible, simplistic writing, it would also endorse a terrible, simplistic worldview.

People choosing to make House Targaryen a representation of and thematic successor to not just the civilization that they differentiated themselves from, but the power structure that they chose to leave, literally divested from, and actively worked to prevent from rising again in another form... really rubs me the wrong way.

Why isn't this projection and generalization done for any of the families that come from the cultures that are not coded as other? Why is it only the family that's been separated from their cultural context? Why do the other families each get to be unique, complex manifestations not just of different aspects of their cultures, but of their own specific histories?

Why is the foreign degenerate family both a representation of everything wrong with the culture they come from, and a scapegoat for everything wrong with the system they assimilated into? How is it they represent everything bad about what they left behind, and also everything bad about the land they came to? Even though all those flaws are not only shared by the system as a whole, but are flaws that predate their arrival, that they were punished for resisting, and that they are demonstrated to be incompatible with. Why is it always both?

It just rings so familiar to the way so many people view the other in real life. Because the Targaryens are overtly, and intentionally written as the other. It's the reason so many people identify with them, and it's the very same reason that other people vilify them. They're not just the in-universe other to the 'default' culture established in the text, but they're also given characteristics that we, the reader and audience, can recognize as other and even sometimes anathema to Western Christian culture.

Perhaps the old tales were true, and Dragonstone was built with the stones of hell

A Storm of Swords, Chapter 25, Davos III

I want you to ask yourself: Why is the idea of "fire and brimstone" evil?

To paraphrase the annoying people that love to cite Ramsay when they feel like it: If you look at a morally complex family surrounded by other morally complex families in a morally complex world in a story that's famed for seeking to challenge your underlying assumptions, and think that their association with fire and brimstone is meant to signify their singular satanic evilness, rather than say... challenge that very Eurocentric assumption, you haven't been paying attention.

This vilification mindset where the Targaryens are the singular evil of Westeros is so common to people who seem to want to consume ASoIaF without engaging with the criticisms of the Eurocentric worldview of history at the heart of it. And they end up using the convenient “others” to project all the wrongs of that world onto so they don't need to examine it any deeper.

This is the part where I so often get crucified!

This is the take that so often gets me crucified for "trivializing real world bigotry" in an attempt to "moralize interpretations of fiction" by an onslaught of people with troubling ideologies who then ironically steer the onslaught to moralizing their interpretations of fiction in a way that seeks to either mask or justify their troubling ideologies.

The worldbuilding of ASoIaF is an almost unparalleled projection of the Eurocentric worldview. That's what makes the world feel so rich. That's why GRRM and even the readers and audience are able to craft so many details that feel intuitive. But that also means that how you choose to interpret that world is often driven by underlying biases and ideologies that relate to that worldview — especially if you're not willing to challenge them the way George RR Martin does and encourages you to do.

It means that certain potential biases and ideologies people might balk at outwardly expressing in the real world are recontextualized in a way that feels more comfortable to indulge in.

There are countless examples from countless parts of the narrative. Honestly, you could fill books on the matter. But the one I'll point to right now is how the vilification I pointed out earlier is so emblematic of how the Eurocentric worldview often seeks to project their own flaws onto the other or choose scapegoats for systemic issues.

It comes from the same place with how someone pointed out that the baffling bastardphobia that would have medieval peasants giving the side eye is so often people jumping at the chance to “cosplay” as bigots who base their arguments in misogyny and bio-essentialism. Because it's an acceptable channel to indulge in that mindset in a way that they'd often otherwise question, or at least hold back from expressing out of caution.

And there I go again. "Moralizing fandom" for pointing out that fandom is so often used as a 'safe space' to build communities that share and spread troubling ideologies that you're not allowed to criticize because those ideologies have been 'appropriately' decontextualized from their real-world parallels, even though those parallels are still very much there.

But the problem is that it's impossible to simply 'channel' bigotry and leave it in an 'acceptable' space, because bigotry doesn't work like that. It's not a static object you can carry around in your pocket to play with when you think it's safe to do so. It's a blight. A living poison that feeds and grows and spreads. And if you give it a 'safe space' and continue to feed it with 'acceptable' fuel, it will always find its way out.

[deservedgrace]

it was honestly really disorienting growing up as a sex averse ace in fundamentalist christianity and then leaving and expecting things to be different and... they are different, but they also aren't in a lot of ways

obviously purity culture is a big thing and you can see its influence in the "real world" and we should be talking about it, but as someone who doesn't like or want sex, i also notice attitudes around expectation of sex are similar

growing up being put in that "girl" box you're raised with the expectation of abstaining from sex until marriage obviously, but once you're married part of your duties are to have sex with your husband. and your husband forcing you is a sin, sure, but you not upholding your duties as a wife is also a sin because your body belongs to your spouse now. refusing your husband access to your body is refusing to submit to him, which is a sin. and since all sins are equal, martial rape is just as bad as refusing sex. with all the end times/rapture/jesus coming back soon bullshit i didn't really expect to even get old enough to get married, and when i started getting older i thought i was just blessed with not caring about sex and i would learn to enjoy it when i was married. but i look back with the knowledge that i am in fact, sex averse, i'm extremely grateful i got out before i was forced to give a man sex that i didn't want to give

and i expected things to be different when i got out, because "out here" was where i even learned the concept of consent and that you're allowed to say no. and it is like that... but there's almost a heavier emphasis on sex being vital to romantic relationships and vital to bonding with your partner. and of course you can say no and somebody not respecting that is abuse, but if you say no too many times then you're withholding sex from your partner which is abuse too. your body belongs to you and no one else, but also sex is a universal human need and you're depriving yourself and your partner by refusing. not having enough sex is a big issue that a lot of couples go to therapy for. my default, my normal, what makes me feel happy and safe makes the average person feel miserable and unloved. "i know you're sex averse, but we only had sex once a month! come on, even you have to admit that's not enough!" (no, i don't). "relationships require sacrifice, your spouse shouldn't be saying no to you all the time." (i can only say no so many times before the way i am hurts my spouse).

i get that there's nuance, withholding sex can absolutely be an abuse tactic, most people are allo/not sex averse, sex is an important part of relationships for a lot of people, most of these things are solved by communication/finding someone compatible etc etc. but the way that sex is oftentimes expected and touted as necessary in relationships in the "real world" almost made the purity culture in fundamentalist christianity feel safer to me which feels extremely backwards. but there were strict rules around when to have sex and you were celebrated for being in a relationship and "resisting temptation" while not being married. now relationships feel more like a threat, and even though i logically understand that this could be solved by communication/a compatible partner, i still very heavily feel the risk of either hurting someone by refusing sex or allowing someone to hurt me by having sex i don't want to have

i'm not blaming people who value sex in their relationships for wanting sex. i'm not saying they should have to sacrifice something they feel strongly about. and i'm certainly not suggesting more purity culture or less sex positivity. i just have noticed that the expectations around sex in marriage in fundamentalist christianity are similar to expectations around sex in relationships outside of it, because sex is seen as necessary for humans, and being a human that doesn't want sex can be really alienating sometimes

[christiansorrell]

TTRPG Read-Through: Patchwork World

Here is a read-through I did last year (originally posted on Twitter) of one of the most unique PbtA games I've ever read: Patchwork World by Aaron King! - Christian

Credits up first. I know a lot of these folks and they are really cool! Excited to dig into this. I've heard good things, and it's been a while since I've read or played any Powered by the Apocalypse.

This is a cool, strong set up for me. I really like settings that ask characters to face a changing world and either take up change themselves or work to restore the old way of things. It's a headspace I find myself in a lot IRL these days so it's fun to explore.

I'm interested to see how the no stats, no playbooks angle of this game works, considering playbooks are typically such a staple of PbtA games.

Standard three-tired success, mixed success, fail forward resolution for rolls here and questions on the moves determine your bonus to the roll. Easy peasy. +2 is the max bonus.

Other types of rolls are described here. Interested to see how they come into play. I also love clocks and use them in pretty much every game I run so it's nice to see those laid out here too.

We just love a lil guy, don't we folks?

A good chunk of the opening here is spent on laying out a lot of solid foundations of roleplaying generally. It feels like a book (so far) that would work for entirely new players. It doesn't feel essential for me, but I never mind a game that supports varied experience levels.

Character creation is wide open, especially since there aren't playbooks and the text stresses that character creation is very much worldbuilding because of this. Fate-like concepts and tags are in here too which are things I generally enjoy. I like the Drawback mechanic.

Moves are in the playback I set in the other room so I'm gonna go grab those. You get two chosen moves and everyone has access to a number of default moves. You've got three other life/XP things to keep track of too. I'm especially interested in Hex.

There are a lot of moves! They seem quite varied and often very weird, fitting well with the titular patchwork world. You can have a duck's slick soul to dodge more easily or a magical space suit or speak to birds or be good at cartography. Overwhelming, but in an exciting way.

You also choose a community as a party. While PCs all have their original homelands (before the end of the old worlds), you know have a community that gets its own little sheet. This is a cool reshaping of the Gangs from Blades. I also like how the community can change over time.

Coming back to a PbtA game after months of more OSR-minded stuff, I think a lot of what these games contain are things that experienced players would say you could just do in any game at any time that it makes sense in the story, but I do find value in stating what's possible.

Esp since many players come to games with artificial limits on their options (whether that's from video games, more traditional RPGs, etc.). I just think good GMing here requires making sure that the players don't limit themselves just to the bevy of explicit options either.

GM moves (mostly to guide the response to failed rolls). I really think the community aspect of this set up is one of the biggest appeals to me so far. That and the wild list of moves, which I'm sure makes for amazing parties of characters.

I always feel like it's never something I should be in my own writing (for some probably unnecessary reason), but I enjoy the first-person, casual writing style throughout the book. Makes for a very chill read.

Good to see this game employs the Branson Reese style of NPC naming.

Stress acts as a single catch-all health and challenge rating for NPCs. Ideally, I'd hope this would help lead to the PCs approaching encounters with more than just violence.

Sections like this are what I'm referring to when I say this book feels very friendly to new players. It's got little anecdotes and thoughts like this throughout.

Look, it's been a while since I've seen A Christmas Story but... it didn't have ghosts in it right?

There's a sample adventure in the back (which I'll skip for this read-through) plus loads of random tables. Some wonderfully bizarre stuff in the characters and faction tables. Really gives you a good idea for how gonzo you can go with the setting.

Love these two in particular

Optional rules include hard mode (which I just think is kind of funny to see in PbtA, but could be cool if you lean heavy into the post-apoc setting) and some optional moves. I like that some moves focus on romance, something I enjoy IRL but never think to focus on in games.

I was wondering why this was the sixth edition!

That's all for the book itself. Going back to the packet to dig into the things I missed. Some expected bits in here but always one or two unique options I really enjoy. Leaking hex is cool (and could have some troubling cascade effects in certain situations).

I definitely wish, at least in sitting down to read like this, that the contents of the player packet was also in the book itself. I think PbtA has this tendency of leading to loads of pages on the table, but it can make them very easy to pick up and play or to learn as you play.

That element is definitely here, but I think the vast number of wide-ranging moves and the excitement that would drum up in my player group would more than makeup for that initial overwhelming feel of "whoa, that's a lot of papers out on the table".

Overall, it's the most I've wanted to play a game in this style in a while. I like that the base setup for the world is very much up to the players to determine via the characters they make. I like that PCs here will probably feel unlike any other folks have played before.

The community aspect feels like where I'd want to center my story around, as a player. Seeing that shift and change over time feels like it would be very rewarding and would help lean into the "the old world is dead, what do we want the new world to look like?" theme I enjoy.

Because Aaron King is cool and recently hit a lot of Twitter followers, Patchwork Worlds is now Pay-what-you-want over on Itch.

I'm not sure if physical copies are readily available. For full disclosure (guess I should have said this up front), I got this copy for free from Aaron! Not for the purposes of this thread or anything, just for fun a while back.

Thanks for reading more ramblings from me! If you like to do that sort of thing, check out my newsletter - Missives from the MeatCastle. It's got writings on my work, cool stuff I've run across the web in the last month, and exclusive rpg stuff! https://meatcastle.substack.com

[unnervinglyferal]

It has been some time since I have talked about my dick.

Around here, most men are not circumcised. It's only done for medical reasons or religious reasons, and christians don't do that. And on another cultural thing, finns are obnoxiously casual about nudity in situations where it's expected. If you're not just as cool with having a classmate talking to you when you're both ass naked in the gym locker room as you'd be while having clothes on, you're the one who's fucking weird. Or alternatively I just somehow ended up going to school with a bunch of absolute psychopaths. Either way, if you don't want classmates looking at your dick, they're going to assume you've got something to hide.

Due to my parents being supremely shitty people, I didn't really grow up around community. For most people I've ever met, I've been the first jew they've ever met. But even if I'm the first circumcised guy they've ever met, mine is not the first circumcised dick they've ever seen. Far from it. And the reason for that is porn.

For some reason internet pornography is circumcised-by-default. Straight guys who have never voluntarily seen a penis in their lives still know what a circumcised one looks like because that's what girls get fucked with in the porn they watch. Even the fucking furries give their characters circumcised dicks if they have human cocks at all. And on an unrelated note, my dick is not particularly big, I'd say it's just about roughly average. The fact that I'm like 10 cm below average height is what makes it disproportional.

What I am getting at is that while I absolutely would not say any shit like "I got picked on at school for having a porn star dick", I will argue that you probably don't know anybody with more right to claim so.

[scarlet--wiccan]

Minorly annoyed that Billy uses the word warlock here as the masculine equivalent to witch as if he hasn't previously used 'witch' as gender neutral AND talked about warlock being a pejorative term for magic users that he personally does not like using... 'wiccan' would be the masculine term for a witch, that's why... he calls himself Wiccan...

Where are you getting the idea that "wiccan" is a masculine term for "witch"? That's not how we use it in the present day, nor is that the reason given in the comic.

Historically, my understanding is that "wiccan"-- or something like it, as these are all anglicizations-- was used either as a verb, meaning "to practice [witchcraft]," or as a plural form of the singular nouns "wicce" (feminine) and "wiċċa" (masculine.) "Warlock," from the Old English "wǣrloga," does in fact translate to "breaker of oaths," as stated in Young Avengers #10, and was taken more broadly to mean "traitor," "betrayer," or "deceiver." The term came to be used as a substitute for "witch" in an explicitly Christian context-- it was used to describe those who'd broken their Christian vows by making deals with devil. It has been used popularly as a masculine alternative for the conventionally feminine "witch" since the 20th century, which is probably more recently than a lot of people realize.

So, for several reasons, the "witch/warlock" gender dichotomy is not historically accurate, and culturally speaking, it's not always appropriate. Pop culture tends to default to this language, and I'd like to move away from that-- and if I were writing a book with multiple Jewish and Romani witch characters, this is exactly the sort of thing I would want to be mindful about. Representation is about more than giving a character brown skin and cramming in a bunch of little cultural/linguistic tidbits. Sensitivity is just as important.

Billy's feelings about "warlock" are inconsistent-- in Young Avengers #7, he actually chooses it over "witch," but three issues later, in #10, he rejects "warlock" and insists on being called a "witch." If you ask me, I think Heinberg himself was just figuring things out as he went along, and I genuinely don't think he knew anything about Wicca when he decided to call the character that. In hindsight, it gives the impression that Billy himself was doing research off-page and changed his mind about "warlock" after learning the etymology. But I do think it's noteworthy that Billy, having negotiated this aspect of his identity twice on-page, lands on the conventionally feminine option of "witch"-- it compliments a lot of the other choices Heinberg made and paints a very specific portrait of what kind of young, gay kid Billy represents.

[maddiviner]

A person can worship a goddess and still be a raging misogynist.

I see this all the fucking time, too, and the "b-but I'm pagan!" line does get trotted out.

Yeah, no. I don't care how devoted you (claim you) are to Hecate/Freya/Babalon etc, I care how you treat flesh-and-blood people.

You can't pretend that "worshiping a goddess" makes someone, by default, not a misogynist. I see guys who have a (weird) notion of "divine femininity;" a perfect nurturing caregiver of sorts. They then get irate when a woman won't take that role for them.

They expect a (very narrowly-defined) goddess, and when they don't get one, they get mad. I end up reading their rants online as a bystander. A lot of these guys will claim the woman has somehow betrayed them, isn't pagan enough, or is an evil supernatural being?! Vampire? It's sometimes something like that.

On another note? Many transphobes are also very loud about how they "worship goddesses." They're, of course, equally loud about their disrespect for women, though. There's some "trad pagan" types, too (or whatever they're now called) who believe in goddesses - but also believe that women belong in the kitchen.

So yeah. Don't assume someone's safe and not bigoted simply because they worship Demeter or whoever. Don't let them claim that their goddess patron absolves any shitty behavior. This is a thing that keeps popping up, and I think people should be mindful of it. Don't let people like the above act as if worshiping Minerva, Aphrodite, or Juno (or whoever) gives them a free pass to be a bigot.

Also? A whole fucking civilization can worship goddesses and still be a terrible place for women.

That doesn't mean that those pantheons are misogynistic. It also doesn't mean that those reconstructing the religions are misogynists. It means that it's possible to have systemic goddess worship and misogyny together.

Don't give me that "b-but in some very specific scenarios, rich women could even *gasps of joy* own property!" either. Don't act like the mere existence of priestesses meant women there held great power, or even that the priestesses themselves necessarily did.

You can't take that kind of thing to mean that your average woman had basic rights in some of these pagan societies. In some cases, that was the case, yeah, but it's hardly been the majority. From what I've read over the years, a lot of it depended on wealth and status.

Even in Ancient Athens (pre-Pericles), women weren't considered citizens, exactly. They could take part in some religious ceremonies, but not most. While they had some financial freedom, they were generally relegated to domestic roles.

Colette Hemingway from the Metropolitan Museum describes this as "extreme social restraint." It doesn't sound like I'd want to live in that kind of civilization, even if I had modern creature comforts. It's similar elsewhere in the ancient world. Not everywhere, but enough places. Don't pretend otherwise.

Much of our history has included misogyny. This isn't a new thing. It was part of paganism. It unfortunately still is. Pretending "we were all considered equal before the Christians came" is disingenuous. And yeah, I've heard people make that exact claim in pagan places.

[olderthannetfic]

I'm always surprised by people who come onto here to complain about people disliking their queer characters in fiction. That's how shit works. When I write queer characters, I do so in spite of the part of me that knows the comments will have queers mad about my fictional queers not being the right kind of queer. That's part of how the world works - you let your world have anything other than white cishetallo culturally Christian atheists in it, and you're going to get pushback. You don't write queer characters because you expect people to be okay with it. You write queer characters because they exist in the world and in the world you've envisioned in your head and you're reflecting those things. And people will hate it, and make big long comments about how much they hate it, or if you're working outside fanfic you'll get a big long YouTube video made about how you're awful and evil, and either way Twitter will rake you across the coals. But somewhere out there there's someone in a miserable, closeted, shitty place physically and mentally who is going to read it and feel better, and that's the thing that makes it worth it.

Like... yeah, anon, I get it. It's annoying when people dislike the same character for being too weird and too normie. I've had people dislike the same character for having too much sex and being a slutty bi and for only having had two partners in his life and being a prude. But you're not writing for those people. You're writing for the bi person who is going to be happy to see a bi man romance an eldritch abomination in space and you're writing the bi character because he exists in the world you've created in your mind and is bi and you shouldn't have to modify him to pacify people.

And yeah, IRL people do the same thing. The bars that form the "community" for queer people where I live dislike anyone who's too weird, too fem, too old, too young, and not culturally Christian atheist. But you don't live for them, you live for yourself. Part of growing up is realizing, post-university, that none of these people matter and you don't owe them anything. People only matter to you if you decide they do. People you don't know and love are strangers, they're not your family. Their opinion does not have to matter by default.

No one hates queer characters more than other queers. But no one's opinion matters unless you want it to. People have to prove to me that their input on my life should matter, and most people have not proven that.

Commenters don't matter. They're just strangers. They're not important.

--

[dross-the-fish]

I get being tired of Dalish centric content, I also wasn't that interested in them.

I mean there's not really much to do about it, the devs are allowed to go where ever they want with the plot and I can just drop media that stops holding any appeal to me but one of the reasons I really didn't gravitate towards the Dalish is kind of endemic of a bigger issue in the fantasy genre and that's fantasy racism. I just hate it, I'm sick of it. I'm sick of the oppressed races being defaulted as non-human and either being elves, orcs or beast-races and Dalish elves barely qualify as a non-human race IMO they are literally just humans with pointy ears, skinnier bodies and bigger eyes. They also aren't that interesting? I think they're meant to represent indigenous people but most of the actual Dalish characters who are significant are white and have a very Celtic aesthetic going on. It feels like what happens when white people fantasize about being oppressed vs IRL minority groups. Like, I'm sorry, I can't take it seriously when the most oppressedTM race is like 90% white British people given generic indigenous-coded flares. When we see Elves of color they are almost always city elves or they're in some way detached from Dalish culture but the writers don't really give city elves much screen time compared to the Dalish and maybe that's a good thing because they'd probably handle it really badly. And yet despite this the writers still kind of treat the Dalish like shit? The games constantly seem to invalidate their culture or reinforce the idea that their oppression is their own fault. It's a mess and I can't be assed to conjure up the fucks needed to care about rascism in Thedas when actual characters of color are oversexualized and then slut-shamed for it (Isabella and to a point Zevran) slavery apologists or supportive of an oppressive system (Dorian and Fenris if you consider his stance on mage rights) or in the case of Vivienne actually compelling and complex but the writers and the fandom treat her like shit. There's also a race that is ACTUALLY tangibly minority coded but the writing around them is flat out islamaphobic. I'm talking about the Qunari, whom the writers have described as "militant islamic borg" they are depicted as dark-skinned, non-human, horned creatures and as hyper militant invaders intent on taking over the world and converting Christians-whoops I mean Andrastians to the Quran-I mean Qun. Yeah they were really unsubtle about that. It was already gross in DAO and only seems to be getting worse the more we see of them.

[traincat]

Kaine connecting with religion but that religion being Catholicism always felt like a wasted opportunity and/or something that still has the potential for a good story? Perfect way to explicitly state Peter's Jewish identity and explore it. Also tbh I think Judaism would be good for Kaine. Yes I'm also Jewish but I swear I'm speaking objectively- it's such a hopeful religion and culture, rooted in struggle and survival in a way that Christianity isn't.

That's a really good insight about survival and Judaism and Kaine, anon. It's like the old joke about every Jewish holiday being "they tried to kill us, we survived, let's eat" but for Kaine it's more like "they tried to kill me, they succeeded, I'm here anyway so now I'm going to order $800 worth of room service." Extremely Jewish of him.

I have complicated feelings about Kaine and Catholicism—though I'm gonna go ahead and say I think comics in general handle Catholicism badly and kind of just treat it like General Christianity or Default Christianity which is I guess what happens when your media empire is founded by Jews.

It's always giving this.

But yeah like honestly I don't think my feelings on Kaine and Catholicism and Kaine and heterosexuality are really that different, where he's aware that these are things you do to Be A Person but doesn't grasp the nuance because he was grown in a vat by the worst man to ever get tenure, so he's trying to connect to something that isn't a good fit for him or that maybe he's not particularly interested in as part of his efforts to be a Real Person and not just Peter Parker's broken clone. Which is really interesting! I don't think that was Yost's intent in Scarlet Spider (2012) when it comes to either Christianity or the Kaine/Annabelle romance, but that's always how it comes off to me on a subtextual level. Kaine is trying to do things the "right way" but he only has a very limited idea of what the right way is, or even that there are other options out there for him. He sees a church, he goes into the church. He sees a girl who is into him, he tries to follow a script where he can't be with her because he's bad news, not because he's not actually interested. (I have a lot of feelings on Kaine's canon romances, such as they are. He's the gay clone.)

And because he's not like Ben and he doesn't have all of Peter's memories, he's sort of awkwardly stumbling around the concept of faith as he sees it in the wider world, without a full understanding of either the nuances of that faith or of his own heritage through Peter. I also feel like even if he did know Peter was Jewish, that might be something he would feel reluctant to embrace unless he was given permission by Peter to share in that with him, because of his complicated feelings on Peter and Ben and his relation to both of them and what he feels he can and can't take away from those connections and what he hasn't earned.

I also do sometimes wonder if Miles Warren was a (lapsed) Catholic and if that's something Kaine picked up through him. That would be something interesting to explore.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Unholy Union: Atheists & Christians | Peter Boghossian & David Silverman

Boghossian: So, what is your take on the substitution hypothesis? [i.e. religiosity as a default human tendency, Woke as a substitute for traditional religion]

Silverman: It's scary, okay, and the implications of it are really scary. Of course, my fear would be, okay I was an atheist leader, I did a lot for atheists, I have been very proud of my accomplishments. Did I do bad, right? Did I cause harm, because now we've got this very persuasive evidence that shows that, yeah, we're going to move from one to another.

And back in 2009 when I heard this idea, which wasn't called the Substitution Hypothesis, it was just called that the default position is religious, I didn't realize that by taking away, that by fighting religion, I would just make way for something else.

Boghossian: I didn't realize it either.

Silverman: A wise man once said, everybody does everything for exactly the same reason. You think it's a good idea at the time. [..] I am afraid that it's true. I'm afraid that it's true. I am afraid that the fight to fight ignorance, the fight to fight mythology, is a never-ending and possibly ultimately losing fight. And that is a hard pill to swallow. Because Dawkins is right, it's a sad world to be in when you don't have data, when you don't have respect for information.

Boghossian: Yeah, when you don't value data, when you don't value evidence, when you won't have a conversation about data and evidence. [..] Let me just be clear about this: on a social level, it's always better to have people participate in a more benign delusion. There's just no question about it. But I don't think that that means that we should encourage people to participate in delusions. All it means is we would just step aside and let their cognitions, let the memetic spread of a less toxic ideology take root in the society. Because if the Substitution Hypothesis is correct, I see no alternative to that.

Here's one: The Amazing Atheist.

Silverman: Yeah, because they're changing the words. They're changing the words to cloud the issue. They're clouding the issue because they don't want to study, they don't want to actually tell people, no. This is the Coddling of the American Mind on steroids. This is exactly what happens when you take away the ability to tell people no. No, you're not actually a woman. No, you can't go into the women's showers. No, you can't compete against actual women because you're not an actual woman.

You're completely allowed to live and do and marry and adopt as you see fit but, no this is where we cross the line. The left can't say that. The left is those helicopter kids are now grown up and now having kids, completely unable to say no to their children's whims. In fact, they absolutely defend those whims.

And the idea that that we are transitioning children is fucking killing me. As young as 12 are getting damaged by activist parents who want to use their kids.

Boghossian: Double mastectomies.

Silverman: It's insane. It's insane that we are allowing our kids to be damaged like this. And when we fight that, when we fight the insanity, we're called bigots, we're called assholes, we're called TERFs and transphobes.

I am a pro-choice person, I have been left of center my entire life. I lobbied personally, at the local, state and federal level for trans rights and I'm an anti-trans person because I don't think you should cut a child, because I don't think a child can consent to permanent change? This makes me a bad person? It's insane what the left is having.

And this is our atheism. This is what's happening in atheism now. And when I say, no wait, let me explain, what do they do? They shut me down, they shout me out, because they'd much rather have the very very easy path of hate, because hate is so easy. Dismissal is so easy. And skepticism is hard. Too fucking bad, skepticism is hard. Do it anyway.

[..]

Boghossian: What are you fighting now?

Silverman: Lies. Immorality. I've taken a humanistic turn in my life. Humanism is important to me, it's always been my driving force, I've never really spoken about it, but it's always been... I believe that we have a pseudo-objective good in the reduction of suffering, every living being flees from suffering on the planet, no it's not really objective good, but it's as close as we get, and the existence of that mandates a morality around it. And that's kind of my position as kind of a firebrand humanism type of thing.

So, if the objective good exists, we must follow it to be good. And when you look at humanism from that perspective, you can build a morality around the reduction of suffering that will include honesty, that will include integrity, that will include skepticism, and you can all bring it back to the root of reducing suffering. That's what I'm fighting. I'm fighting suffering.

[morlock-holmes]

You're right; heroism wasn't about "godness" originally. A history prof of mine always teaches about the world view of ancient Greek society by pointing at some student in the first row and asking "your pencil case. How did you get it?" and when inevitably the answer is either "I bought it" or "it was gifted to me", he goes, voice full of disdain and condescension "and do you think that's *heroic*?" bc what made you a heros was that you got rich and popular by tricking or killing people.

I feel like I'm expressing a very old and very mainstream view of pre-modern (and pre-Christian) value systems and assumptions so it's frustrating to have people just... dismiss it out of hand.

But what I've only just realized today is that "you got rich and popular by tricking or killing people." is a pretty good description of how most D&D player characters act. I find that's actually the default play style unless you outline alternative assumptions ahead of time.

In practice, most games of Dungeons and Dragons are, I think, played out with assumptions much like those held by the story-tellers of antiquity: the success of the player characters is desirable simply because they are the player characters, and they don't require a moral justification to annoy, exploit, outwit, steal from, or fight the NPCs; danger, emnity, or the possibility of material gain are enough, no matter who or what the NPC is.

So it's interesting that there is this big fight between two duelling modern (And fundamentally moral) ideas about heroism in the fandom.

[beatrice-otter]

This is a perfect example of why the first step of doing activism--or even understanding what activism is going on or should be going on!--is to actually do research and listen to the fucking people you supposedly care about.

99 times out of 100, if you hear about some injustice to a group you have little/no contact with, you will not be able to figure out what they need and what needs to happen without doing a lot of research. And a lot of that research is probably going to be unlearning things you already know.

Do you know where the idea that "control of land means throwing out or killing people we don't like" comes from? It comes from colonialism! It comes from nationalism! It comes from white supremacy! It comes from purity culture! There have been a lot of societies throughout history where either the society was multi-ethnic, or multiple ethnically-based societies lived as neighbors in close proximity and shared resources. It was not always equal, it was not always peaceful, it was not always nice ... but it's possible. And in a lot of times and places has been the default.

"We control this land so everybody in it has to be exactly like us or they have to leave or be persecuted" is one possible method of exerting sovereignty. But there are a lot of others. Assuming it's the way that indigenous people are pushing for when they say they want "land back" can lead to only two options, neither of them good. Either you say "well, I'm on the indigenous side and this is what they want, so it's what I'm advocating for" and start pressing for things they explicitly do not want, OR you say "well, that's unreasonable and bad, so I think they're wrong and shouldn't get this" when what they're actually saying is something totally different.

So often I read things from online leftists and I realize how little has changed since the 19th Century White Christian Savior/Progressives. "We are Good People who want to Save The World. We are educated and good, and therefore we know what everyone else needs, and will work to see that they get it. We don't need to ask what they want or need because we are Good People and Well Educated and have the Correct Understanding of the world. If the people we are uplifting are Good, they will see that we are Right and be Grateful To Us because we are such Good People."

No! It doesn't work that way! The first step--which continues the whole time--is to listen.

I hope western leftists know that standing for a free Palestine is not the end of decolonization. I've seen far too many white leftists who proudly stand for freeing Palestine which is good but then get nervous and apprehensive at the idea of decolonizing the very land they are on. Norway will recognize Palestine but actively tear down Sámi liberation. Liberation for one people means it for us all. If you support Palestinian liberation but deny it for the Indigenous people of the land you're on then you didn't stand for Palestinians or any of us to begin with.

[hell-ama-official]

Once, I said measuring something makes it less remarkable.

Understanding the world makes it safer, makes you feel smart, but it also makes it less wondrous. I don't think it's inherently wrong to search for understanding and meaning and knowledge, but there is a sense of surprise and child-like discovery to learning something without knowing its internal mechanics.

Today I almost went on a long discussion of something I had previously hand-waved multiple times before, and I was correct in doing so. I've taken the post down from the queue, because I feel like they demystify something that shouldn't be demystified. Pulling away the veil can be fascinating and liberating, but once you know the trick, the repeat performance will not capture your attention as much as one did previously. Like the magic(less) tricks. The blade folds. The table below the hat has a hole in it. The cards are attached to a string.

I won't spread misinformation on purpose, but I might withhold information that makes Hell sound boring, intstead of capturing your imagination. My job is to answer questions about Hell in a way that gets people thinking, "Huh, Christianity's not all it's cracked up to be, and Hell's actually kind of an interesting place with its own share of problems", as well as to be "entertaining enough you don't notice it when the Devil gets ya", and turning into a textbook runs counter to that goal.

That being said, I will not be publicly answering questions on the precise mechanics of tilt weather of Hell, because I cannot in my ability make it sound captivating. Learning how, exactly, it works may make the nature of Hell less confusing, but it is emptying. It is existentially horrifying, in some ways. It's not information that matters to anyone other than physicists and experts on magical metal-making should care about. Dredging up the topic makes me feel rather like putting a kitten in a vacuum chamber and slowly pumping out the air.

You can refer to this post for any questions about tilt weather.

The layers of Hell aren't stacked in the same three spacial dimensions and are constantly shifting through a separate dimension, colliding with and separating from each other like plumes of smoke. It contributes to why Hell is so confusing, and why items get lost all the time, but it's not the main main reason for why Hell is such a mess, physically and metaphysically. Hell makes no sense. Hell is horrible. I regret ever starting this blog every time I have to say anything about the metaphysical nature of Hell.

Citizens of Hell use "kata" and "ana" to signify these directions. It's easy to imagine Hell dimensions being tipped over and falling katawards, clipping through each other. The schoolyard joke "the kata tilt ate my homework" is a pun not worth consideration on literary merits alone, but it is somewhat accurate, as sometimes objects will, in fact, randomly disappear due to an invisible planar movement.

Kata and ana, as should be clear to anyone who has access to a search engine, any search engine, are loan words from four-dimensional physics, and it has to be that way because before the standardization of the direction names reached Hell from the upper realms, ana had also been called Avici, Abi, Ardenti Lotos, or "ah shit, perpendicular zoomies", and kata was considered the default state. All of these terms are currently considered culturally inappropriate and are no longer used. Although it could be debated that these words came from Hell and were culturally appropriated by humans, I'm not about to get into specifics of that particular ant colony.

The tool to measure tilt is called kataclinometer, which is horrendously uninspired, and whoever named it should be legally enforced to have their name changed to "Entity #6666661313". Kataklinometers are both rare and dangerous, as a side effect of measuring precise tilt creates either an ion or an electron bombardment field inside of a protective barrier, depending on the tilt. I've never been near one, and I don't ever want to.

I think I went through all of the questions the original message asked, except for "how are any of you alive?" The answer, as usual, is barely.

[cripplingparanoia]

🩷About me!💕

• I'm not going to say my legal name, but you may call me Ahana or Ana, & my initials are JJSS.

•I am 🧿21🪦, and my birthday is on Oct 2nd, so I am a ⚖️Sun in Libra🛡️

•I live in the United States

•I have 2 favorite colors, green and pink

•I also like blue, purple, brown, grey, black and white a lot

•My favorite animal is Manatees

•If I could go anywhere, I would go to Japan

•My favorite place to go is the beach

•I am not married but I hope to be.

•I have a baby son. Mother of One👶🏽🍼

•I am Bisexual💜Slytherin🐍Decepticon👾

•I am monogamous with men aside from girlfriends. That is to say, I will only be in a relationship with one man at a time, but whether I am with a man or woman, I am open to more girlfriends. It's not exactly "ambiamorous", but that is the closest label I know of. I am a 💞Lover🩷🔒💘Girl💕

•I am a 🪽Female🗝️ and I identify with that, I go by 🪬She/Her🌊, but due to my ♾️ Dx AuDHD🦖&OSDD-1b👥, as well as my spiritual and personal beliefs, ✝️Religiously Christian⛪ 🕉️Spiritually Omnist🌀, ☯️Hippie☮️, Im not sure that there is a way I can explain my experience of gender that would work, so I find it easier to stick with the default, and I think identifying as cis female is an important aspect that complements the more mysterious aspects of how I experience my identity (I am a woman but in the way moss, rain, and crows are. Like I'm not nb, I'm a girl, but I'm a swamp girl, I am made of mud, but in a female way)

•I would love to publish some of my novels and poetry, and it'd be nice if I ever released any of my music

•If I did get famous for my music I'd be like female Freddie Mercury.

•If my books took off tho, I'd probably just live alone in the woods in a cabin with a lil livestock and a garden, or just wherever I live before that, & occasionally do a book signing or something lol. Accept an award then disappear again lol

•When I was 13, my dream job was to be a Forensic Anthropologist after reading Deaths Acre. Now, it might still be a nice idea, but if I had to work, I'd either be in a daycare or pet store/shelter, or a funeral home, graveyard, or morgue. Lol, yeah, I tend to be starkly contrasting like that

•Other than that, it'd be nice to own a florist/plant nursery that also sells other lil stuff like crystals and fresh raw honey and dried flower crowns etc. or a cafe that has photo booths where you can have brunch and a photo shoot with the food & props

•My hobbies include baking, reading, watching TV, playing video games, watching YouTube, going on walks or runs, being in nature, going shopping, and making art or decorating. I'm trying to get into knitting, and I know how to sew, but I don't have a machine. I want to garden, and have pets and livestock eventually. I like hiking, swimming, camping, going on picnics, exploring, and going outdoors in general. I'd like to do more adventuring. I want to do ballet and belly dancing and karate. I'd need to exercise, do yoga, meditate and just relax more overall, do some spa or self care days... Aspiring Author🖋️📔

•My favorite foods are burritos, tacos, sushi jambalaya, pizza, and any soups or stews (beef stew)

•My favorite snacks are hot cheetos, cheese it's, gold fish, iced animal crackers, bread & rolls, mozzarella sticks, and charcuterie boards

•My favorite desserts are ice cream, cheesecake, chocolate cake, cookie cake, red velvet cake (I especially like those last 2 for my birthday), macrons, churros, sour gummy worms, sour patch kids, pie, snickerdoodles, peanut butter cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and iced sugar cookies (yk the ones)

•My favorite drinks are monster, black or sweetened coffee (mocha or pumpkin spice especially!), vodka!!! (w la croix), tequila, whiskey, mountain dew, dr. pepper, smoothies, and lemonade

•My all time favorite song is Puppy Princess by Hot Freaks, and the my top 4 (of 5) is Heatwaves by Glass animals, Cry By Cigarettes after sex, Treehouse by Alex G, and the lonely by Christina Perry

•My favorite artists are XXXTENTACION, Queen, My Chemical Romance, ICP, Marina and the diamond, Melanie Martinez, Lana Del Rey, Mitsuki, Lil Tecca, Juice Wrld, Lil Peep YNW Melly, and Joji

•My favorite movies are The Breakfast Club, Pretty Woman, Harry Potter, and Star Wars.

•My favorite shows are Transformers G1, Adventure Time, Gravity Falls, Regular Show, Steven Universe, My Little Pony, South Park, and Naruto.

•My favorite books are The Furthest Away Mountain by Lynn Reid Banks, The Girl of Fire and Thorns Series by Rae Carson, A Separate Peace by John Knowles, A Long Walk To water by Linda Sue Park, and Animal Farm by George Orwell.

•My other favorite songs are anything by XXXTENTACION (especially NEVER and KING) and Queen (especially Killer Queen and Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy) and My Chemical Romance (Especially Demolition Lovers, The World is Ugly, and The Light Behind Your Eyes), Piggy Pie & Sixicde Hotline by ICP, Something in the Way Dumb, Rxpe Me, and Polly by Nirvana, Money Machine, Hand Crushed By a Mallet, Stupid Horse and Dumbest Girl Alive by 100 gecs, Heyloft and Verbatim by Mother Mother, Hold on Till May by Pierce the Veil, I'm Not a Vampire by Falling in Reverse, all I want is you by Rebzyyx, TV by Billie Eillish, Lucky by Lucky twice, Go Ghost by Karlaaa, Mary by Alex G, Nowhere to Run by Stegosaurus Rex, and No Wind Resistance by Kinneret.