#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.

[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.

[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.

[spacebatisluvd]

So, I agree with the idea that Horde Prime's behavior towards Hordak is just as bad, if not worse, than his behavior towards Catra and Glimmer. And I'm not going to come on your blog and tell you that you're 'wrong' for liking Hordak more than them, etc. But I will say this: the other reasons why we might like Catra and Glimmer more than Hordak, aside from them being attractive and relatable (which is subjective, I guess) is that they are given more screentime to develop, so there are more chances to connect with them (which is less subjective). Plus, Hordak only becomes sympathetic later, with the reveal of him being an abuse victim, and of his real motivation, much later, whereas Catra and Glimmer start out sympathetic, even if they sometimes do bad things, too. There is also the matter of how they express their emotions: even when they're being mean to Adora or about to make a really bad decision, etc., you can always see the emotions leading up to that. They cry, and they have irises/pupils/more nuanced facial expressions. Catra has breakdown. But with Hordak, his primary default emotions appear to be 1) anger and 2) nothing, until Entrapta shows up. Of course, he has other emotions before he meets her, I'm not saying he doesn't, it's just that to me, the expression of them generally comes out as looking like either anger or nothing, which is not very sympathetic to a lot of people. (For example, Catra is angry at Shadow Weaver for committing child abuse, and feels fear after the purification ritual, but Hordak undergoes the purification ritual and seemingly has no reaction to it afterward).

In terms of Horde Prime specifically... Horde Prime keeps touching Catra and Glimmer against their will, in a very specific way, which is animated so that you pay close attention to it. During this, their facial expressions are like, "Don't touch me!" The show already is very dark sometimes and covers issues like child abuse, mental illness, harmful ideas from Christianity, etc., so I think you are meant to interpret Horde Prime as sexually harassing two vulnerable young women and getting away with it for the time being because he is in a position of power.

(You don't have to answer this, obviously. And I sympathize with Hordak somewhat, in addition to sympathizing with Catra and Glimmer. To me, it's not that he isn't abused, OR that people who don't sympathize are misinterpreting. It just has to do with the order in which events are presented to us, and the way that the characters react/express emotion when something happens to them, among other things).

The funny thing, Anon, is that you’re doing a very good job of proving my point.

I think the show could have done a much better job of building sympathy for the clones and for Hordak. The way the show presents these things is very much meant to make a viewer scared for Catra/Glimmer rather than to build sympathy for Hordak and the clones. That’s my problem—I think they could have easily done both, rather than ignoring one for the other.

It’s kind of upsetting to me that the nonhuman characters aren’t afforded the same care and empathy in the writing as the human (or more human-looking) characters. Especially when you also consider that less human-looking, “ugly”, and/or reptilian characters are always the bad guys in the show. It’s an unfortunately common practice in fantasy media that I find upsetting for a variety of reasons. It has some Unfortunate Implications to say the least, particularly when presented uncritically as it is in the show.

I think your interpretation was the intended interpretation and that’s my main criticism of the writing—for season 5 in particular. You’ve done an excellent job laying out how the way those scenes are presented changes the way a viewer feels about the scenes and the characters.

However…I am going to point out that we do see Hordak cry when he realizes Entrapta is “dead”. And his screams during the actual purification ritual are horrifying. Go rewatch it, if you don’t believe me.

I will also very politely invite you to understand that having a flat affect—Hordak’s lack of visible emotions, even in the face of some truly horrifying situations—is (or can be) a sign neurodivergence. Many people in real life will present in the same way. Just because you can’t see someone’s feelings on their face, that doesn’t mean they aren’t experiencing them. In fact, considering how much time we all spend interacting from behind a screen, I’d say being able to understand the way someone is feeling, even if you can’t see their expression, is becoming a more important skill for all of us to develop.

But…on re-reading your ask, I’m guessing you’re here because of that recent ask about the comic, and not because of my tirade about how Wrong Hordak’s pain is treated as a joke within the narrative, which is the typical source of these sorts of asks. I think you may have accidentally stepped into a well-trodden argument over on my blog. So maybe you’re not aware of my stance on all this.

In any case, you don’t need to explain anything, Anon. As I said in that ask, the characters folk fixate on will vary and will vary for different reasons. My criticisms of the show do not extend to folks who find other characters more sympathetic—your preferences are your preferences, and that’s fine. So long as everyone is respectful of everyone else—and you have been—I really don’t have an issue with anyone.

However, if I said something that made you feel bad about your preferences or like you needed to justify them, then I am sorry for that. That reply was meant more to give the other Anon some support and remind them that they can dip into some Hordak-focused content in our pool if they needed that extra bit of fandom support. (Sometimes fandoms can feel a bit isolating if you spend a lot of time away from folks who share your focus, and I think that’s part of why Anon needed to vent.)

I have a rather formal style of speaking, especially when replying to strangers, so I can see how my reply to that original Anon may have seemed critical of other folks’ preferences. That was not my intention and I do apologize if that was the impression I left you with.

[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.

[kassil]

Planescape and the Great Wheel

I've seen some people (understandably) complaining about the Great Wheel cosmology of D&D, and how the default design of things implies a wackified version of christian theology, with Heavens that are Nice Places and Hells that are Nasty Places and some weird stuff sprinkled in elsewhere. It's extremely unpleasant in a lot of ways (and I won't defend the setting at all when it comes to Orientalism - Planescape was arguably worse about it than other settings, since they happily tried shoehorning any pantheon they could find into the planes somewhere.)

(If you want to complain about there being planes of evil and planes of good, take it up with the people who insist that alignment is a thing that has to be in the system. As it stands, it is baked into the rules and changing that requires a lot of homebrew work, but that's a topic for a different day.)

But while Planescape as a setting was what popularized the Great Wheel cosmology the most, I want to be clear that while newer editions paint it as some inherent cosmological megastructure, in Planescape the fundamental concept is that the only cosmological truths are the rule of threes, the unity of rings, and the center of all. That Great Wheel is just a ring imposed by the current Powers of the multiverse, organized in patterns of three, with the Spire and Sigil as an artificial centerpoint. Asking what lies beyond it, what came before it, and what's really inside it are all absolutely valid questions that the setting itself wants you to ask and answer.

There's nothing writ about it officially, but there are plenty of hints and winks - that the fiends of the hells aren't the first to live there, and might be as wardens of the prior occupants or vermin infesting an abandoned home, depending on where and when and how you look. The same goes for the celestials, and the exaggerated alignment aspects of their home planes, combined with the many, many problems both implied and plainly depicted in the material make it pretty clear that the planes are both a battleground and a construction. Planes lose fragments of themselves to other planes all the time; the more-lawful-than-good Arcadia lost an entire layer to the entirely-lawful Mechanus, and while the people who caused it would very much like to get it back, it's clear that none of the planes are immutable - just mostly under divine control.

And then there's the fact that magic - including divine magic and the very powers and essence of the gods - fades as you get closer to the immense spire at the heart of the Great Wheel. Get a god close enough and they're no tougher than a barbarian with an axe. It strongly implies that things aren't what they seem at first glance, even if it's treated as a natural law; to say nothing of Sigil and the Lady of Pain, who can forbid gods from the city and apparently killed one who tried to claim portals as his domain. The City of Doors, which has portals that defy all the understood laws of planar travel, linking everywhere with everywhere without a need to pass through the transitive planes.

Planescape outlines a massive, complex, and self-contradictory Great Wheel cosmology, one that was plainly meant to make you ask "So what if I use Plane Shift to try to teleport to the far side of Mount Celestia?" Because what's past the embodiment plane of Lawful Good? It's either conceptually rarefied to the point that you'll never come back after dissolving into it... Or it's whatever the current Powers really don't want you seeing and learning about. An Astral Sea, a plane of Dreams, a plane of Time, entire other cosmological systems built around other designs, the homes of things older than existence, or any number of other things. All tidily hidden behind "oh yeah that doesn't exist/it's the Far Realm where reality just sort of dissolves we don't try going there/nothing to worry your pretty mortal head about, leave those questions to the gods."

(Which any Athar worth their membership will absolutely begin poking at immediately, while the Bleaker will tell you that it doesn't matter what the gods say, if you help them get the soup finished for the public kitchen they'll introduce you to a guy in the Gatehouse who says she's seen some things, and the other factions all do their own thing and pay the gods and their agents no mind.)

This is all just a long way of saying "The Great Wheel is there as a narrative tool, and breaking the Wheel and finding out what it was built to hide is a narrative that can be told."

[tempobrucera]

How about a director's cut for Tainted Church? 😊

Oh, yes, definitely.

Sacred Heart - Tainted Church is probably one of my favourite smut stories that I wrote? And after that (you know which one) photoshoot I had to.

I started (and have one in the middle and ended) it with a bible passage because it's smut that plays in an actual church, it's not a prayer or something, it's just something that is in the bible and is about sin, kind of

It has more metaphors in it than some other stories again by default. Thomas "dresses up" (which is a stretch, lol, he wears a clerical collar) as priest in this fic to seduce Reader to fuck in a church. Because he's quite desperate to get Reader to sin and be the one who gets Reader into that position in the first place and he isn't afraid to take some more, lets say, drastic measures, to get his way here

Even tho he dresses up as a priest and a religious kink was definitely the main reason why I wrote this, one of the first notes I made was: "What if Thomas is the personification of the devil?" And I kept to it, and I hinted at it through the whole fic (will come back to it) and also made more notes for this for the second part

I needed them to get to a church in the first place. I was thinking about a wedding invitation, about a confirmation, anything like that, first. But Italy is a really conservative Christian country actually, so I thought maybe I don't have to go that far but with that also go further, because Thomas wouldn't say no to his parents asking if they join him to go to church for some holiday (in my head it was something around Easter btw) and he knows that Reader wouldn't say no either even when they don't like churches or the concept or the concept of god and that they would never say no to something where Thomas tells them to do the opposite. He knows all that, so he takes it as his advantage

Reader loves the architecture in churches though which is really me. I love the architecture in religious buildings in general, it's something breathtaking. Old buildings in general and how much they have seen as they'll get to an age a human being could never

"You don’t like being judged by something so intangible as god, you know that he doesn’t either." -> I have said it before already but it can take a while to write sentences like this. Like there are probably 10 versions of this sentence and it's the only version that stuck. Also I found it an interesting concept to put two people who might be nonbelievers but still feel uncomfortable being judged by something that might be not exist into this scenario

"The deal is sealed. Oh, if you would have known that you just signed a contract with the devil, maybe you would have taken the way out." -> That Reader is saying yes to Thomas and the church visit is like a deal / a contract with the devil, just that Thomas was cheeky enough to not make it clear that this is in fact a deal, because he isn't planning on letting Reader off the hook now

"There’s nothing sacred to Thomas; you should have known." -> I love that little sentence here so much. It's like Reader should have known better, blaming themselves, because Reader knows Thomas

Thomas actually asks Reader to be honest with him when he asks if Reader is getting aroused. And the natural reaction of Reader is to still lie, even when it's really clear that it's a lie, especially to Thomas. But Reader lies because that's a normal reaction, or would you just be truthful from the start when you're ashamed of something? They are on a way to a church, and Reader desperately tries not to be desperate, while Thomas tries to get Reader desperate before they even reach the church and he wants Reader to be honest about their arousal

"In the distance you can hear a bell ringing; you should have taken it as a warning." -> Church bells have been rung as a warning throughout history. For example as a warning of invasion or as a warning when there's a flood

"“I don’t like starting things and not ending them.”" - He is lying, maybe not the first time, maybe not the last time. But in this case Reader is aware that it could be one

"Its disingenuously sweet. Too sweet for such a hellish tongue." -> You know, the devil and hell

"“You really are the devil,” you say. “Maybe.” He takes another drag and blows the smoke into your face. “But we will see who is going to go up flames when we step over the threshold. You or me.” -> He isn't denying it, or saying it's true. But he is having a lot of fun with playing with that shameful arousal of Reader with the things he does and says. Like, what he's saying is, yeah, maybe I am the devil but when time comes to tell, Reader might also go up in flames, end up in inferno because Reader is that sinful right now

"“I’m a sinner disguised as a saint, always.”" -> Actually there's a passage in the bible "And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light."

He lies about his parents, and maybe he lied about his parents from the start. Who knows. Only Thomas can tell

Thomas is praying next to Reader and all Reader can think about is getting between his legs, on her knees, which is a place of worship, kneeling but probably not sucking Thomas off

"A bouquet, made of arum lilies, twigs of cypress, red orchids and baby’s breath, that Thomas got you a while ago." -> I love love love the symbolism of flowers

"It’s such a shame you think, that they don’t survive long after they’ve been cut. How the flowers decay from a beautiful wonder of nature to a wilted bunch of sad looking creatures." -> Don't ask me how I wrote this because I can't tell you, I re-read it and was like how did that come out of my head, I really like it

Same goes for the memento mori part, no clue how I wrote this. But I know why I wrote it, both of it, because these two parts go together actually. The flowers that die and people die as well, much later, but that you have to consider it, you only have an estimated timespan on this earth and you have to enjoy your time. For Thomas that means, because death is around the corner, that it's okay to sin while being on earth. And obviously the link between that, the devil and Reader saying that Thomas is the death of her

The fire is coming up through the whole fic, like going up in flames, the warmth, the inferno in Readers stomach, ect.

Even tho I wanted to have Thomas a certain way, to get Reader certain places, I always wanted him to be gentle in the small gestures

But still when Thomas gets Reader where he wants to have her, it's also uncomfortable, it hurts a bit and they think maybe it should, because Reader knows what they are doing is a sin, that was Thomas is doing is shameful, but Reader is sosososo aroused by Thomas, and Thomas is still so soft to lure them, Reader would do anything, Reader would believe Thomas anything in that moment. And they both love each other deeply because they otherwise wouldn't do this together

Thomas leaves half moon shaped marks on Reader with his nails -> The half moon symbolises life and death as well

"“Pray.” For the first time you can see the shame in his eyes. Thomas kisses your forehead gently." -> As I said, Thomas despite everything is gentle, he's in love. And in the end, he's ashamed as well, of what he just did. He can't pray it away but Reader might can, that's why as shameful as it is, he has Reader do it. Also there's the saying: "Tell the truth and shame the devil". Reader is being honest, praying because they sinned, and Thomas can only look on feel all the shame in that moment

[sastrugie]

If you decide to share one on tumblr, I would love to read it! No pressure. That's so sweet that y'all send each other poetry. I saw in an interview once that Elton John & David Furnish send each cards once a week no matter where they are, and they've been together for decades.

I usually write little phrases that I can't get out of my head or longer essays. I'm not great with any poetry format ha.

I'm writing Harry/Eggsy! Have you read "Behind Every Exquisite Thing" on AO3? Eggsy saves Conrad's life and brings him to the present, and it's one of the most stunning fics in the fandom.

Thanks for the Led Zeppelin recs! Misty Mountain Hop is sooo good.

I don't like Christmas, but usually end up around someone celebrating by default, lol. I celebrate Yule, the Winter Solstice! What about you?

Ohhh i didn't know that about Elton John 🥹😍 I love him sfm ! I should do this with my partner too haha sadly they move soon :(

I Love poetry so much and it's not always about the meaning but also a lot about the choice of words and how it sounds when you read it.

The artist.

"And now I know why they say artists create either when they're in love or despair

For these feelings are so close as flowers growing beside each other breathing the same air, drinking the water

It breaks you

You bleed it on the page, the blood drops like petals

On the page

Where you carve your soul

So distant yet so near your feelings dictate the words.

Words that are so different.

Though "I love you" can be whispered and "I want to die" can be screamed

They are one and the same. "

Hope you like it 🙈🙈🙈

Ah isn't harry/eggsy from the kingsman ?! I loved the movie esp the third one !

I celebrate Christmas but like not Christian (I don't have a confession) but in general I love to chill with my family and just enjoy the calmness. I Love winter Solistice🔥🔥🔥 def celebrate it sometimes

[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.