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steveyoungjokes · 2 years

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Discworld Pushed Me Left

by Steven Young

Thanks to the marvelous editor, Lyta Gold.

[Originally published in Current Affairs, (before the purge)]

It took Hannah Arendt two books and 800 or so pages to describe the origins of totalitarianism and the banality of evil. Terry Pratchett did it in 326 words when describing the workplace culture of the religious torture chambers in his book Small Gods. Karl Marx spent many chapters in Capital describing how the rich fleece the poor; Pratchett boiled much of that down into the 169-word “‘Boots’ Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness” in Men At Arms. By using humor to poke fun at the world that he created, Terry Pratchett made many progressive and leftist ideas accessible, explainable, and shareable. And his Discworld series helped move my political outlook leftward in a way that not many other things could.

I grew up conservative in the way that many middle-class suburban religious white kids are conservative. (“We’re fine, right? Everyone else must be fine, then. If not, it’s their fault.”) My father was a career Army officer and my mother had been in the Army during Vietnam. As adults, they both joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons). That’s why I served a mission for two years in Brazil (for my Church), and why I joined the Marine Corps, serving my country (I thought, lol) for 12 years. You would think that being a religious colonizer, and a veteran in the “War on Terror” would have cemented my conservativeness, but the most important thing I inherited from my parents is silliness. I am a very silly person, and am more strongly influenced by funny things (comedy, light-hearted fiction) than serious things (pundits, war). Conservative comedy, I realized as I matured, wasn’t particularly funny or clever, since it consisted mostly of racism and bullying. In watching, listening to, and reading comedians who critiqued society and its institutions, rather than just mocking people, I began to see the weak points in my inherited conservative views. Then I found the Discworld, and was changed forever.

Terry Pratchett’s 41-novel Discworld series describes a place of barbarian heroes and hapless academics, brave witches and cowardly Wizards, silly kings and evil fairy godmothers. There are magical flying dragons, and domesticated swamp dragons with a propensity for inadvertent self-immolation. You’ll also find plenty of politics, as well as war, inventions, grifting, intrigue, love, danger, and DEATH. (On the Disc, Death is no mere abstraction, but an anthropomorphic personification with a voice like “the lid of a sarcophagus slamming,” who is really quite likeable.) Perhaps more than anything else, the Discworld has humor. Every page is full of puns and other wordplay, clever rejoinders, and silly situations. Pratchett’s stories are often laugh-out-loud funny and at the same time incredibly insightful, often by using a silly situation to show the inherent silliness of many things in our world.

In his book The Truth, about the invention of the newspaper, Pratchett writes that “People like to be told what they already know… They get uncomfortable when you tell them new things… They like to know that, say, a dog will bite a man. That is what dogs do. They don’t want to know that a man bites a dog, because the world is not supposed to happen like that. In short, what people think they want is news, but what they really crave is olds.” Pratchett often gets the reader to think about “the news” by referencing “the olds,” re-telling classic stories from a different perspective to challenge their established values. For example, in Witches Abroad (Discworld #12, Witches #3), the young witch Magrat Garlick is given a magic wand, and told that she is to act as fairy godmother for a young woman named Emberella, an obvious play on Cinderella (both in name and, as we find out, in the story). After many adventures on the way to find Emberella, Magrat discovers that there is another fairy godmother who is “helping” Emberella by trying to force her into marrying a handsome “Prince” (who had until very recently been a frog, and still thinks he is one). The book hinges on Magrat and her fellow witches competing with this other fairy godmother by trying to help Emberella figure out if marrying the handsome prince is what she really wants. The entire story, in fact, is premised on what happens when powerful people (in this case, powerful magic users) try to impose their idealistic stories onto the lives of others.

Pratchett’s 41 novels are dense with literary references, and are hilariously critical of just about anything one could be critical of. I do not have enough space to give the incredibly broad scope of the characters and places of the Discworld the discussion they deserve, so I will focus for now on the biggest city on the Disc: Ankh-Morpork. That’s right, “Ankh-Morpork! Pearl of cities! This is not a completely accurate description, of course—it was not round and shiny—but even its worst enemies would agree that if you had to liken Ankh-Morpork to anything, then it might as well be a piece of rubbish covered with the diseased secretions of a dying mollusc.” Ankh-Morpork can be likened to immediately-pre-industrialization New York City and London, and many of the problems in the stories arise from the growing industrialization of the Discworld—such as urban blight, policing, corruption, organized crime, innovation, monopolies, and lack of funding for public services.

The government of Ankh-Morpork can be described as libertarian, more or less. The city of millions is ruled over by the Patrician, whose role is, as he understands it, to ensure that everything works. “Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote,” Pratchett writes in Mort. “The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.” The Patrician, Havelock Vetinari, doesn’t rule Ankh-Morpork with an iron fist: he just lets everyone go about their business, and then rigidly holds them accountable. That said, his real power comes from his ability to influence people by sheer foresight and incredibly detailed planning. In fact it was Vetinari himself who instituted a new type of “justice” system. He legalized the Guild of Thieves:

“Crime was always with us, he reasoned, and therefore, if you were going to have crime, it at least should be organized crime...[I]n exchange for the winding down of the Watch, the [Thieves Guild] agreed, while trying to keep their faces straight, to keep crime levels to a level to be determined annually. That way, everyone could plan ahead… and part of the uncertainty had been removed from the chaos that is life.”

I can imagine certain libertarians trying to explain how paying a predetermined amount to the Thieves Guild in exchange for a receipt and future protection is different from paying taxes, but you and I both recognize that that argument would be nonsense. By taking the concept of “organized crime” literally, Pratchett exposes the baselessness of the libertarian idea that freedom can be found through just legalizing everything and resolving all conflicts through contracts. Arrangements like these don’t make people any safer, and no matter what, they still result in powerful entities charging citizens money for protection.

The societies in Discworld are pre-industrial, as I said, with some later going through industrialization, and for that reason there is little governmental regulation of housing, industry, commerce, and the environment. The water in Ankh-Morpork is described as having a “thick texture,” “too stiff to drink, too runny to plough” and smelling like “several armies had used it first as a urinal and then as a sepulcher.” Any urban planner will tell you that environmental degradation, among other things, leads to urban blight: Ankh-Morpork is squalid and dangerous. As Pratchett writes in Pyramids, there “was not a lot that could be done to make Morpork a worse place. A direct hit by a meteorite would count as gentrification.” For all the danger and organized crime, “murder was in fact a fairly uncommon event in Ankh-Morpork, but there were a lot of suicides. Walking in the night-time alleyways of The Shades was suicide. Asking for a short in a dwarf bar was suicide. Saying 'Got rocks in your head?' to a troll was suicide. You could commit suicide very easily, if you weren't careful.” There’s a sly joke in here about crime statistics, and how technical terminology can be used and misused to tell a certain story. Relatedly, the Assassins Guild in Ankh-Morpork doesn’t commit “murder”; instead they merely “inhume” their victims, but they keep detailed records of their work and come down very hard on unlicensed inhumations. The state of policing in the United States is so horrible that perhaps, if we had a strong Assassins Guild, it would be an improvement; sure, murder would be officially legal, but in the guild system it’s costly to hire an assassin and costly to be an unlicensed assassin, whereas in the United States the police often do the assassinating themselves. At least in Ankh-Morpork the Assassins Guild school provides one of the best and well-rounded educations on the Disc, with scholarships for need-based students. This is partly out of noblesse oblige, but mostly because the experienced assassins know how important it is to keep an eye on youngsters with an aptitude for the profession. (Yes, to some degree this sounds like the current school bully-to-cop pipeline, but at least Pratchett’s assassins are held accountable.)

Criminals in Ankh-Morpork are often just referred to as ‘entrepreneurs,’ and at the start of the Discworld series, the city doesn’t have much in the way of a law enforcement system. Due to Vetinari’s re-organization of the Guilds into self-enforcing crime causing and prevention, an official law enforcement body was seen as superfluous. For that reason, early in the Discworld series the Night Watch has only three very ineffective police officers. To leftists like me this may sound great, but as discussed above, Ankh-Morpork’s methods of criminal self-enforcement coupled with unregulated markets makes for a pretty terrible place to live. The three officers of the Night Watch—Captain Sam Vimes, Sergeant Fred Colon, and Corporal Nobby Nobbs—have three different takes on policing (all of which might be called a sort of “anti-policing.”) In Making Money, Pratchett writes that “Colon and Nobby had lived a long time in a dangerous occupation and they knew how not to be dead. To wit, by arriving when the bad guys had got away.” Sergeant Colon was the type of policeman who would say that “trying to keep down crime in Ankh-Morpork was like trying to keep down salt in the sea…” and would avoid having to interact with criminals by proactively guarding very notable city locations because “[o]ne day someone was bound to try to steal the Brass Bridge, and then they’d find Sergeant Colon right there waiting for them. In the meantime, it offered a quiet place out of the wind where he could have a relaxing smoke and probably not see anything that would upset him.” Corporal Nobbs, however, is the kind of person who joins armies to loot corpses. He’s often the main suspect in any unlicensed minor theft around town, stemming from his preferred method of police work (testing doorknobs to see if houses are locked, and going into the unlocked homes to make sure no thieves are there.) Slightly less risk-averse than Sergeant Colon, Corporal Nobbs would never fight fair:

“Corporal Nobbs,” [Vimes] rasped, “why are you kicking people when they’re down?”

“Safest way, sir,” said Nobby.

When we meet Captain Vimes in Guards! Guards! (Discworld #8, City Watch #1), he’s a somewhat functional alcoholic who stumbles through the city avoiding crime as much as possible, and trying to keep Colon and Nobbs from getting into dangerous situations. Over the course of his arc, we learn that Vimes is driven to drink because of past trauma, plus the ongoing and somewhat banal trauma caused by the internal tension that he experiences as an ersatz peace officer who is constantly confronted with the fact that he is mostly powerless to protect those who need protecting and that most of the harm caused to the city and its inhabitants is technically “legal.” In short, to the extent that Vimes can be considered a “good cop,” it’s because he comes to the realization that the status quo of organized and legalized criminal syndicates fueled by unregulated libertarian capitalism doesn’t help people, and he pushes back somewhat significantly against that status quo.

That being said, in later books the Night Watch is expanded (as one of the more prominent efforts in Ankh-Morpork to officially reflect the diverse social makeup of the city). It becomes the City Watch, and Vimes is promoted, becoming a part of the aristocracy. This is all a bit neat—it just so happens that Ankh-Morpork’s libertarian problems can be solved by more policing, and Vimes is rewarded for his efforts. However, despite Vimes’ increased station, and the increased power of the City Watch he commands, he remains mostly grounded and functions as a traitor to his new class. This is likely because of the lessons he learned during his years of living on the lower rungs of society, probably the most famous of which is:

Captain Samuel Vimes’ “Boots” theory of socioeconomic unfairness.

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.”

Though there are flaws to Vimes’ theory (mostly because there are many additional reasons why the rich are so much richer than the poor), his theory is very understandable, and can lead readers to ask deeper economic questions about labor, value, and planned obsolescence. It doesn’t seem like many leftist academics have incorporated Vimes’ Boots theory into their writings, but the internet is full of people who read the Boots theory and immediately find that it describes their lived experience. As many of us have seen, the internecine online leftist debate over “reading theory” vs. “not being a fucking nerd” often does not lead to much progress when it comes to spreading awareness of left ideas. It is my opinion that a very readable, understandable, and funny version of “theory,” like the one Pratchett wrote, allows for more people to understand—or become interested in or familiar with—leftist theories than would otherwise be the case. I know that during my post-Marine Corps life, Pratchett’s humor was integral for my discovery of progressive ideals.

There are subtler left touches in Pratchett’s work as well: while many stories do focus on high-level political actors or those on the front lines of conflict, his writing also considers the lives of ordinary working people. The personification of Death, rarely dealing with kings and potentates, spends time working as a farm hand, interacting with children (who, like magic users, can see him because they “can see what’s really there”), playing rock and roll, and trying to discover the meaning of life… and death. The witches, as powerful magic users, do interact with various political leaders, but it’s very clear that they gain their power and experience from helping farmers and shepherds deal with the everyday, practical issues that are part of life in a pre-industrial society. Another subseries focuses on the senior faculty of Unseen University—a bunch of old wizards with tenure—but every story illustrates the blinkered stupidity of these senior faculty members, and how useless they are without the help of their support staff.

Though Pratchett often writes stories about the inherent goodness of most people, he is also interested in the ways in which anybody can become a collaborator with evil. Perhaps the best example of this comes in Small Gods, in which the country of Omnia launches a “Quisition” [inquisition] complete with torture pits. The cellar of the Quisition is not, at first glance, a wildly evil workplace: “There were no jolly little signs saying: You Don’t Have To Be Pitilessly Sadistic To Work Here But It Helps!!!” But take a look at their coffee breaks: “The inquisitors stopped work twice a day for coffee. Their mugs, which each man had brought from home, were grouped around the kettle on the hearth of the central furnace which incidentally heated the irons and knives.” This is such a small, perfect image of evil: the inquisitors heating their coffee and their torture tools on the same hearth. Pratchett further describes their environment:

“...there were the postcards on the wall. It was traditional that, when an inquisitor went on holiday, he'd send back a crudely coloured woodcut of the local view with some suitably jolly and risque message on the back. And there was the pinned-up tearful letter from Inquisitor First Class Ishmale "Pop" Quoom, thanking all the lads for collecting no fewer than seventy-eight obols for his retirement present and the lovely bunch of flowers for Mrs. Quoom, indicating that he'd always remember his days in No. 3 pit, and was looking forward to coming in and helping out any time they were short-handed.”

Pratchett could, of course, be describing any office break room. The casual and friendly quality stands in horrid contrast to the actual work of the inquisitors. On this point, Pratchett is unsparing: “...there are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.”

Reading this, as a former soldier in the U.S.’s imperial military, and as a member of a generally conservative religion with a strict hierarchy, this passage (and Small Gods in total) helped me recognize the part I had played in evil. I am still a member of my church, but do my best to push back against the banal and even friendly aspects that push people to accept evil results without question. Recently, I led the teenage boys in our local congregation in reading Small Gods together, with profound results: these fellows understood the underlying themes perfectly. It was very heartening to witness young people realize how humor can be a part of discussing serious topics, and how easily one can be co-opted to do harm by a seemingly inevitable and even friendly-seeming organization. It should be noted, that this experience did not (from what I could tell) cause these young men to question their faith, or to immediately start sinning (hormones will likely do most of that work), but it allowed them the space to question the parts of our organized religion that merit questioning.

Teasing out all the thematic complexity of Pratchett would take an entire magazine by itself, but it’s worth looking at his approach to gender. There’s Monstrous Regiment, in which (spoiler) nearly every seemingly-male soldier in the army turns out to be a woman in disguise, and a very competent woman at that. (Incidentally, Pratchett does a surprisingly good job of describing the nitty-gritty specifics faced by a frontline soldier that are otherwise almost never mentioned in literature.) Other novels revolve around the experiences of Tiffany Aching, a young witch who must navigate adolescence, gender roles, feminism, rural life, and incursions by very nasty creatures; and she does it all while subverting traditional fantasy stories’ treatment of women and sexuality.

Tiffany’s stories—and that of the other witches— are presented in sharp contrast to those of the wizards. These tenured academics live in a gender-segregated university that admits only men (with one eventual exception); they are celibate, and show no interest in the women who clean up after them. For example, in Unseen Academicals, the Archchancellor Ridcully realizes he “had never thought of the maids in the singular. They were all…servants. He was polite to them, and smiled when appropriate. He assumed they sometimes did other things than fetch and carry, and sometimes went off to get married and sometimes just...went off. Up until now though, he’d never really thought that they might think, let alone what they thought about.” Women’s labor may go unseen in the Unseen University, but the narrative ensures that you see it. Additionally, the absurdity of the university and the relative impotence of the wizards’ magic is constantly contrasted against the witch-style of magic that is largely about creating life and being useful. For example, while the witch Nanny Ogg is the matriarch of a large family, has had a host of husbands (which is not seen as particularly scandalous), loves singing dirty songs, and has published an adult-themed cookbook, the wizards of Unseen University have to keep the magical tome Ge Fordge’s Compenydym of Sex Majick “in a vat of ice in a room all by itself and there’s a strict rule that it can only be read by wizards who are over eighty and, if possible, dead.” There are multiple interactions between the wizards with their supposedly-high minded form of academic magic and the witches with their supposedly-homespun form of rural magic, which end up as pointed critiques both of gender and the hierarchical forms of educational systems. In most of the Discworld books, both wizards and witches believe that magic should be gendered; in Equal Rites (Discworld #3, Witches #1), the wizard Treatle states that “Witchcraft is Nature’s way of allowing women access to the magical fluxes, but you must remember that it is not high magic...High magic requires clarity of thought, you see, and women’s talents do not lie in that direction.” At the same time, Granny Weatherwax agrees, saying “if women were meant to be wizards, they’d be able to grow long white beards...wizardry is not the way to use magic, do you hear, it’s nothing but lights and fire and meddling with power.”

That said, the witches do a much better job of questioning the existing hierarchy and challenging their social status than the wizards. In A Hat Full of Sky (Discworld #32, Tiffany Aching #2), Pratchett describes the nature of the witches’ non-hierarchy (while also illustrating the power of a determined individual) when he writes that “witches are equal. [They] don’t have things like head witches. That’s quite against the spirit of witchcraft...Besides, Mistress Weatherwax would never allow that sort of thing.” Though Granny Weatherwax is likely powerful enough to run roughshod over the Disc, she seems to be of the same mind as Tiffany Aching’s grandmother, who said “Them as can do has to do for them as can’t. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices,” a rather different ethic than that exhibited by the wizards, who gain rank by killing older wizards. In “‘Change the Story, Change the World’: Gendered Magic and Educational Ideology in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld” L. Kaitlin Williams points out that “the witches’ subversive educational ideology not only undermines the wizard’ repressive educational ideology, but also...takes on a threateningly rebellious quality capable of toppling the hegemonic and hierarchical structures of Discworld.”

This is well-illustrated in The Wee Free Men (Discworld #30, Tiffany Aching #1), where Tiffany Aching seeks out more formal witch training and is told to “go to a high place near here, climb to the top, open your eyes...and then open your eyes again,” the lesson being that witches learn from experiencing the world as it really is, rather than taking tests and attending lectures. This self-education, based in lived experience and self-knowledge, helps her defeat her enemy, the more logic and reason-based Queen of Fairyland who tries to tempt and trick her with realistic dreams. Tiffany’s less-than-formal education also makes her a natural ally of the mysterious and magical Nac Mac Feegle “pictsies” with their anti-authoritarian rallying cry (in a Scottish-ish accent) of “Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! Nae Master! We willna be fooled again!”

But the most subversive part of Discworld—or possibly the least, depending on your perspective—may be the Industrial Revolution Series, featuring the novels Moving Pictures, The Truth, Monstrous Regiment, Going Postal, Making Money, and Raising Steam, which cover issues such as the free press, minority rights, support groups, industrialization, mechanization, government services, trains, recycling, and telecommunication. Three of the books center around Moist von Lipwig, a former conman who changes his stars (somewhat reluctantly) and helps found or resurrect some of Ankh-Morpork’s public institutions. In Going Postal, Lipwig is tasked with saving the city post office when Reacher Gilt (a brutal steampunk pirate who clearly inspired Jeffrey Bezos) tries to drive it into ruins (via murder and monopoly) in order to force everyone to use his new visual telegraph system. Moist manages to save the post office while working through civil rights issues and confronting the complexities of incorporating new technology and automation into a changing world. He also gives us a glimpse as to why he’s an ideal person to usher in a new style of banking when he stops to think about the concept of money:

“Money is not even a thing, it is not even a process. It is a kind of a shared dream. We dream that a small disc of common metal is worth the price of a substantial meal. Once you wake up from that dream, you can swim in a sea of money.”

If this sounds a bit like the principles underlying Modern Monetary Theory, you’ll love the sequel Making Money, in which Moist is tasked with saving the city bank. Specifically, he is tasked with taking the bank over from the people who had previously been running it, and who, among other class warfare tactics, wouldn’t let poor people bank because they felt that “a brigand for a father was something to keep quiet about, but a slave-taking pirate for a great-great-great-grandfather was something to boast of.” In addition, they had come to understand that “the best way to make money out of poor people is by keeping them poor.” Moist saves the bank, and likely the city, when he comes to two important realizations. First, that many people of Ankh-Morpork do not trust the banks (likely because of the dismissive attitude bankers held [hold?] toward the poor), but they do believe in the overall progress of their city. Second, he notices that many people of Ankh-Morpork have begun using postage stamps (which Moist invented in Going Postal) as currency. Combining these two insights, he realizes that the city’s money does not need to be backed by gold, and begins making new money that is backed by the city itself (and further determined by the value of the bodies of the city’s inactive golem slaves/workers, which is just a whole other mess). If this doesn’t sound like an especially profound reform, you would be right. Ankh-Morpork remains a city with terrible living conditions, terrible water, and extreme inequality. Making Money is the only Discworld book with an economist in it, and it has predictable results.

The neoliberal blindness at the end of Making Money is not the only flaw in Pratchett’s Discworld. Despite its breadth of subjects, it is very much a product of a Briton (Pratchett’s full name is actually Sir Terence David John Pratchett OBE), a fact which is reflected in the way that he writes about Fourecks, the Discworld stand-in for Australia, not being a finished continent. Pratchett often uses physical caricature to make great plays on words, and for the most part he makes jokes about everyone, but sometimes it can dip into the realm of body-shaming; for example, there’s quite a lot in Making Money about the villainess being fat and ugly. Sometimes, Pratchett’s love stories can be a bit rote, as if it is the woman’s duty to let the man woo her, and although many of Pratchett’s women characters are quite empowered, this can sometimes take a form similar to the CIA’s new ad promoting case officers who refuse to “internalize misguided patriarchal ideas of what a woman can, or should, be” while shaking hands with Gina Haspel. And because Pratchett’s books are humorous, they are sometimes seen as low brow or “light reading” that justifies “robbing readers of the true delights of ambitious fiction.” That may be true, but it should be noted that light or humorous reading can often be used to tell stories that don’t otherwise get told. That said, the effectiveness of Pratchett’s prose may be limited by the fact that oftentimes the people least likely to want to read a silly story are the people who most likely need to experience something from a different perspective.

Reading Pratchett is a delight, and not just because he uses minute details of the lived experiences of working people and incredible humor to turn accepted stories on their heads. Fun is important for its own sake. I’ve read most of the Discworld books several times and am constantly astounded that nearly every single page has jokes and puns on it. You’ll laugh, but you may also shed tears of melancholic camaraderie, as I did when reading Night Watch which features much of Vimes’ heartbreaking backstory. But don’t take my word for it; as Terry Pratchett’s Moist von Lipwig would say “I wouldn’t trust me if I was you. But I would if I was me.”

#discworld #terry pratchett #comedy #silly

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gayleviticus · 4 months

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I didn't really notice this before but it's interesting how in the dispute over whether Jesus is casting out demons because he himself is on the devils payroll in Matthew 12 - there's the famous bit about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit which lots of people get hung up on (and understandably so, esp if you struggle w scrupulousity and OCD - very inflammatory thing to put in the Bible @ God).

but Jesus then goes on to talk about good and bad fruits, and this line struck me: "Either make the tree out to be good and its fruit good, or make the tree out to be rotten and its fruit rotten; for the tree is known by its fruit."

you can kinda sense his frustration here. "make up your minds! either I'm doing something wrong or I'm not; can we not try to claim that I have some evil hidden ulterior motive that makes all the good things I'm doing secretly bad."

now sure, there are circumstances where people can do or support good things for bad reasons (nazis using anti Zionist sentiment as a dogwhistle; terfs making a song and dance about feminism - altho id argue neither of these groups are particularly 'doing' good things just hijacking them, but there are also just homophobic conservative churches that do run soup kitchens and food banks and yet that doesn't counterbalance the bad they do) or do bad things for what they perceive to be good reasons. but seems like what Jesus is talking about is again his old maxim of judge trees by their fruit; don't decide a priori that since X person is wrong therefore everything they do is tainted with wickedness.

blasphemy of the Holy Spirit happens when people see God at work doing good things and decide, in order to preserve their preconceived ideas about the way things are and what's good and bad, to call good evil.

and I think the reason that's an 'unforgivable' sin isn't necessarily because it's a particularly heinous one, but because it fundamentally warps your ability to interpret the actions of God. If you see God's goodness and mercy and grace at work in the world and decide well actually that's the Devil - how are you supposed to ever break out of that and truly recognise God? it's like when someone is hyped up on flat earth, creationism, anti vaxxer, protocols of the elders of Zion conspiracy theories; they've kinda destroyed their ability to even consider any alternative simply by loudly insisting any counterpoint is propaganda, any evidence to the contrary is fabricated, science itself is a hoax. blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is the same; people have destroyed any external benchmark (such as the harm and suffering being created) for judging their interpretations of scripture and faith.

and I can't help but think a bit on queer christians (as usual; I need to start finding other topics to get on my soapbox about), bc when we offer the fact that gay relationships or gender transition cultivate love and joy and peace and kindness and goodness, we get very much the same answer as Jesus' critics gave. "Pff. It's the work of the Devil." People a priori reject the good and life giving things we find in queerness because they don't want to deal with the implications of that. and so we get people insisting that bad trees can bear good fruit.

now in fairness they often do try for consistency and insist that actually this good fruit is a hollow lie and truly LGBTQ people are suffering underneath from living against God's will. but I think this view is losing its power bit by bit bc people understand it's asserting ideology over reality. it's a hard sell and not an intellectually serious position. either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad

#queer christian #gay christian #christian #christianity #religion #bible #lgbt christian

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darth-mortem · 27 days

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There is a small episodic fanfic about Ghost and Soap.

Soap is bored waiting for exfil, and all sorts of strange thoughts come into his head, which he tried to discuss with Ghost. 979 words.

The mission was completed. Somewhere down there, in the valley, a terrorist base was burning. Soap blew it up when he and Ghost retreated, having obtained the information they needed. Climbing the high hill to the exfil point, Lieutenant Riley contacted Price and Garrick and learned that they had succeeded too, destroying their target. Now Ghost and Soap just had to wait for the helicopter to come for them.

“Steaming Jesus!” Johnny exhaled and fell into the tall green grass with his arms outstretched. “Why is th’ bloody exfil point sae high?”

Ghost wearily sat down next to the sergeant, unbuckling the straps of his helmet. Then he pulled a flask from the pocket of his tactical vest, opened it, and handed it to Soap.

“I hope it’s whiskey.” He raised himself on his elbow and held out his hand.

“It’s water,” the lieutenant said, “take and drink. How is your knee?”

“It hurts.” Soap answered, sipping from the flask.

“I’ll massage it when we get back to base,” Ghost promised, taking out two cigarettes.

They smoked in silence. The mission was hellish; they were both very tired, and soon Simon was lying close, resting his head next to Johnny’s. The top of the hill was covered with grass and flowers, which smelled so sweet that when Ghost finished his cigarette, he didn’t lower the edge of his skull mask. Its fabric was soaked with the stench of ash, fuel, burnt flesh, and blood. If not for the sounds of explosions and the thick black smoke coming from the valley, the landscape around them could have been considered wonderful and very peaceful.

“Hey, Lt.” Soap broke the silence. “Look how bonny it’s ‘ere. Th’ grass is very soft, th’ sky is almost clear, and the sun is sae warm. It looks lik’ heaven, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know.” Ghost answered. “I don’t believe in heaven.”

“Och, really?” Johnny turned his head to Simon. “Then what dae ye think will happen tae us after death?”

“I hope nothing.” The lieutenant sighed. “Like someone just turned off the light.”

The sergeant thought about Simon’s words. The MacTavish family was religious, and although Johnny hadn’t been in the church for a long time, he still believed in heaven and the redemption of sins. However, he didn’t consider himself a sinner, because he was doing a good deed—ridding the world of evil. Nevertheless, Soap had never before thought that someone could believe in nothing at all.

In the meantime, Ghost took out his radio and contacted the pilot. It turned out that he was flying to pick up Price and Gaz first, so the wait would be longer than the lieutenant thought. He wanted to tell Johnny about it, but the sergeant was ahead of him, speaking first.

“And what about ghosts?” He asked and smiled cheerfully. “Dae ye believe in ghosts, Ghost?”

Riley looked at him carefully, trying to see if he was serious, and then heaved a heavy sigh. Sometimes Johnny would confuse him with his strange questions and statements, which were more suitable for a child than for an experienced soldier, a member of an elite special unit.

“Just imagine, Lt.” Soap continued without waiting for an answer. “What if ye ‘n’ I become ghosts after death? We could live in some huge old house or even a castle!”

Ghost just rolled his eyes and took out another cigarette. Johnny, however, wasn’t fazed by his silence and continued.

“You, Lt., would be a gloomy, terrifying ghost that scares everyone.” He said. “And I’d be friendly; help find lost things or something else. And do you know what’s most important?”

Simon didn’t answer again. Johnny looked at him and then rolled his eyes and sighed.

“Th’ most important thing is that we’ll love each other even after death!” He exclaimed.

Soap thought that he wouldn’t answer again, but Ghost moved a little and suddenly asked:

“Can ghosts sleep?”

“Well,” the sergeant answered with a confused smile on his lips, “I dunno, but I think yeah, they can sleep.”

“So if I’ll become a ghost, I’ll sleep.” The lieutenant said.

Johnny laughed, but then he understood that it wasn’t a joke. Not that Simon didn’t have a sense of humor, but he was usually amused by all sorts of sick ’half-a-dog’ type of things.

“All the time?” He asked, and Ghost nodded.

Soap sighed and looked at the sky where small white clouds were. He watched them for a while. They floated slowly, covered the sun from time to time, and reminded Johnny of cotton candy his parents always bought him at the amusement park in his childhood. He wanted to share this memory with Simon, but remembering his upbringing and kept silent. The clouds, meanwhile, changed their shapes, so Johnny squinted and smiled.

“Look, Lt.!” He exclaimed. “That cloud looks lik’ an otter that sits oan a stump! And that one is lik’ a big pie-eater rat! And this…”

“And this looks like Price.” Ghost said it suddenly.

Johnny took a closer look, and sure enough, the cloud’s outliners was similar to the captain’s hat and his unchanging cigar.

“Exactly!” He said and was happy that Ghost had supported this silly game. “And that cloud looks lik’ a…”

“Heli!” The lieutenant tensed and started to get up.

“No, it’s nae!” Soap snorted.

“There,” Ghost pointed in the other direction. “Our heli.”

The sergeant got up too and rubbed his knee. They both watched the helicopter descend, circling over the hill. Gaz was already waving his hand from the landing bay, and Ghost thought that he should be careful not to fall out again.

“It’s time to get out of here.” Riley said when the heli hovered low above the ground. “Fuck yeah!” Soap agreed, and they ran to the landing bay, where Garrick and Price stood and looked at them.

#call of duty #simon ghost riley #ghost x soap #ghostsoap #soapghost #john soap mactavish #soap x ghost #ghoap #simon riley #johnny mactavish #ghost cod #soap cod #johnny soap mactavish #cod fanfiction #cod fanfic #cod fic #fanfiction

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catholic-character-tournament · 10 months

Text

Round 4 - Catholic Character Tournament

Propaganda below ⬇️

Gambit

He is catholic, cares about the cross and baby jesus and everything. He also has red and black eyes and a member of a Guild of Thieves. He has been a thief since a child and is proud of it. His marriage was anulled and he got remarried later, but inbetween he had a lot of sex with random people. The fact that he is catholic and doing all this shit is never brought into question.

Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler Propaganda:

good lord where do i start. in the animated series he converts logan to catholisism and then fucks off basically thats the main thing he did there. i think one time they tried to make him a demon to explain how he looked but everyone hated that. he sold his soul one time to help his friends out after he died. he and logan have a weird little gay thing. he was a priest one time but he was made a priest by a fake bishop from a religion that hates mutants iirc so he just wasnt a priest. like 3 people have written him in a way i like and one of those is my friend just talking about how they view him.

wow marvel loves making catholic characters dress/look like demons

Kurt is a mutant who was born to mystique who looks a LOT like a devil (technically is half one but that cannon truth isn’t real go back to bed), his mother dropped him off a cliff when he was born and he was picked up by a Romani group/circus (fuck old comics man) however he then narrowly escaped being sold to a freak show and found himself in a small German town. There he met a kind priest, who showed him God, and he quickly grew attached to the idea- However, it wasn’t long before people began labeling him a demon and soon the whole town was against him with pitchforks and fire. Cornered and injured, Kurt thought this might be the end for him- maybe he would see heaven so long after finding it- but he was then saved by Charles Xavier who invited him to the X-Men. AND ITS BEEN SO MANY YEARS AND HE HAS BEEN THROUGH SO MUCH THERE. SO MUCH. SO GOD DAMN MUCH. BUT THE MOST AAAA THING TO ME CONCERNING HIS FAITH HE WHEN HE LITERALLY DIED AND WENT TO HEAVEN BUT THEN BECAUSE OF DRAMA WITH HIS FATHER HAD TO BRING HIS FRIENDS IN WITH HIM FROM THE BEYOND. THEN WITH ALOT OF TROUBLE THEY FOUGHT HIS FATHER AND THE ONLY WAY KURT SAW TO STOP HIM WAS IN A MOVE THAT STRIPPED THEM BOTH OF THEIR SOULS AND PUT THEM BACK ON EARTH. SO KURT CANONICALLY HAS NOW LOST HIS ABILITY FOR ETERNAL PEACE, LOST HIS VERY SOUL, TO SAVE PEOPLE- AND ALSO TOLD NO ONE NOT EVEN HIS GAY LOVER WOLVERINE.

Nightcrawler is a mutant vigilante who looks like a classical demon. He can’t even go to church without people panicking and trying to exorcize him. Despite it all, he’s so full of faith and hope and compassion, and he wants to believe the best of everyone. Also, he’s bffs with an extremely angry Jewish sword lesbian. That has nothing to do with anything, but it’s important to me that you all know that.

What if you were a devout christian and literally looked like the devil? He nearly became the pope, which was a plot by some supervillains that also involved faking a rapture? There is nothing like comics I swear to god.

A catholic who is half demon I don’t think I can better explain a struggle than that. But his character is so relatable to people who feel unwelcome with their congregation because of something that is a part of them but still feeling a connection to the faith. Kurt actively engaged in his faith and shares how his faith helps him through all the things he has faced in life and how he found a home with those of the church who leave the judging to God.

so they made kurt a priest briefly before deciding to retcon it, resulting in nightcrawler actually being part of a plan by villains to promote him to pope then reveal to the world that the pope is a demon. wild.

I have a side blog and a tattoo about him and i really really want him to win

Wisecracking devil-appearing devout Catholic with the Best superpower (teleportation)? HECK YES

German Catholic circus acrobat who looks like a demon & can teleport through a hellish alternate dimension with a puff of sulfur. Character of all time.

hes catholic and his dad is the devil. what could be funnier than that. also hes my silly little guy.

Nightcrawler is the world’s most fun catholic priest. I first was introduced to this kindhearted teleporting acrobat while he saved a boat full of stowaway refugees from inter dimensional pirates with swashbuckling gusto!

#cct polls #tumblr tournament #tumblr bracket #tumblr polls #polls #kurt wagner #x men #nightcrawler #marvel #xmen #x men comics #marvel x men #r4 #gambit #remy lebeau

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marvelcriminalhoe · 2 years

Text

His Sinful Devotion

Part 5

Older! Dark! Church guy! Steve Rogers x Innocent! Naive! Preachers daughter! Reader

Warnings: Age gap, Dark, manipulation, dubcon-ish, power imbalance, Talks of god, talks of praying, talks of courtship. Steve is hardcore manipulative I’m serious, reader is hardcore innocent, groping, innocent kink(is that a thing???), praise kink, daddy kink. P & V action (but not sex). Naked humping (Is that how I describe this? idk) . I think that’s all? Idk let me know if I’m missing something. Obviously this is very much nsfw and 18+ only

AN 1: I posted this to my second account on mistake :/ so here it is again lol! If you're here for smut, its at the end. If you're here for storyline, it's at the beginning. If you're here for both, enjoy :)

Word count: 3,793 Series Masterlist

The annual church retreats happens every summer, starting during the first week of June. The church owns a small campground with a few single cabins, along with two dorm style cabins, one for the men and one for the woman, and one big cafeteria shared between all of them.

The first retreat is the kids camp, where the all the church kids, ages 7-12 spend 3 nights, learning the layout of the Bible, pushing their bunk beds together to talk all night without getting in trouble, and playing down by the water in the sun.

You loved those times when you were a kid. Those five days were really the only time you had friends all year, since your parents were so strict, and unlike the other kids who all went to school together, you were homeschooled.

The next retreat is the teens camp, aged 13-18. They get to spend 5nights at the camp. They also have more class time, learning more about sin and the devil, how to not be like “the world”. Nights are spent sneaking into the kitchens for leftover dinners, days spent whispering about which boy or girl is cuter while trying to make it seem like you’re singing the right words during worship.

This is when retreat started being a little less fun for you. Cliques start to form around this age, teens usually sticking with the group of friends they have all year, which is something you weren’t accustomed to. But you still had fun, even if you were off reading passages while the other teens were whispering about crushes.

The third week is for the single young adults, ages 19-24. They spend their 7 nights at camp, learning how to navigate the world and help turn more people to Jesus. There’s no sneaking out to the kitchens or whispering during worship. The Young adults that do go to retreat usually want some sort of career in ministry and enjoy the connections they make. They also might be looking for potential spouses, but it’s not as obvious as when you’re a teenager.

The past two years, you’ve got to enjoy this retreat, make some acquaintances with people your age in the church. There’s a lot less games and lots more reading than the retreats passed, but you didn’t mind.

This year however, you will be attending the adult retreat. It’s for ages 25 and up, but if happen to be younger than that and you are courting, engaged, or married, you can attend as well, since a lot of the courses during the 7 night stay are relationship based.

Your parents thought it would be a good idea so you and Steve can attend some of the classes together. Steve also wanted you there, since he would be teaching some of the classes himself. Why would he spend 7 days away from you when he didn’t have to.

It’s been about 2 months since Bucky’s visit, almost 3 months total of courting you, and Steve has you exactly where he wants you. You follow his every word, follow his every command without complaint. He felt like he hit the jackpot with you awhile ago, but now, molding you into the perfect little wife, he knows for sure.

And after this week, everyone else will too, he’s sure of it.

Steve hates the church retreat. Every year, same he attends, and every year it’s as if the single bachelorettes of the church vie for his attention. But this year, with you by his side, he’s almost looking forward to it.

Steve finishes packing his bag and grabs his phone, checking the time. He’s meant to be picking you up in 30 minutes, which gives him enough time to jack off before. He’s not sure if he will be able to sneak off with you this week, the retreat going to be packed with the rest of the adult congregation. He also didn’t think he would be able to stop himself if he had you blow him off on the way there. It’s only a 10 minute drive from your house to the camp grounds, and 10 minutes isn’t nearly enough.

As he washes himself off, changing into a new set of clothes. He grabs his bag and drives to you. He’s quick to knock on your parents door and help you with your bag when you come out.

“You look beautiful angel.” Steve smiles over at you as he gets back in.

No matter how many times he’s complimented you, you still get flustered every time. You still don’t understand why Steve, this extremely handsome, most eligible bachelor of a man, has picked you out of every woman in the church. Steve is great, perfect even.

Sometimes though, you get a little, scared, of him. He’s never done or said anything hatful to you. He’s only ever been extremely sweet and loving. But one Sunday at church, when one of the men at church made you a little uncomfortable, Steve stepped in, and the way his voice got low and dark, paired with the murderous glare he had, sent a cold chill down your spine.

But whenever you think of that moment, you shake it off. Steve is a wonderful church going man. He’s nothing short of perfect.

“Thank you.” You return his smile, “you look very handsome as well.”

Steve rests his hand on your thigh for the rest of the drive. When getting to the camp grounds, Steve kisses you sweetly after grabbing the bags out of the back, handing you yours.

You split off, you going to the woman dorm as Steve heads to his private cabin. You can’t stay in the same cabin, considering you are only courting, so you will be in the dorm with the other women.

You unpack your bag, making your bed on one of the lower bunks, smiling when it’s completed. The bunks are only twin beds, which can be a little uncomfortable when the springs poke into your back due to thin mattresses, but you don’t really complain about it. You have used the same twin sheets and comforter for the camp bed since you were 13. White with pink and yellow flowers embroidered all round. It’s almost like a tradition for you at this point, and it always makes you smile.

As you turn around, you see Sharon at the bunk across from yours, unpacking her own things.

“Hi Sharon.” You greet her.

She looks up from her suitcase, face falling when she sees you, “Oh, hi.” She blinks a few times, eyebrows scrunching in confusion, “I didn’t know you would be attending this retreat.”

“My parents believed it would be beneficial since me and Steve are courting.” You shrug.

“Hmm.” Sharon nods, going back to unpacking her suitcase.

You feel like she’s disappointed you’re here, and it makes you a little uncomfortable, but you shake it off, thinking she’s probably just tired. You bid her a goodbye as you head to the dinning hall, helping set things up for the week wherever you can. When you’re done, you head back to the dorms to wash for dinner, but stop when you enter through the door, hearing what’s being said in the room.

“What is she, a child? Why is all her stuff so innocent looking.”

“I know! I can’t believe she’s courting Steve.”

“Well, she won’t be for long if I have anything to do about it. Steve wants a real woman, not some idiot little girl.”

The woman in the

Tears threaten to spill down your face, making you bump your shoulder into the door panel as you scramble to leave. You’re eye sight is blurry as you stare at your feet, sniffling and trying to get as far away from the dorms as possible.

You know you aren’t the most sharp when it comes to relationships, mostly due to your upbringing, and you aren’t unaware of how people view you as naïve. The kids used to make fun of you, as if you wouldn’t understand the words they would spew. But you did, and this feeling, is not one you’ve learned to deal with well.

You don’t understand why people feel the need to be rude and judge, especially with the fact you only ever really interact with people that are supposed to also be meme era of the same church. Supposed to follow the same ‘do not judge’ command. Sometimes you feel like you’re the only one that actually tried to do that.

Maybe you are naive.

“Hey sweetheart!” You hear Steve’s voice call out to you.

Steve.

You have Steve.

He’s never once been mean to you or judges you. He’s only ever been caring and sweet.

You wipe your cheeks as you look up, seeing a smiling Steve walking towards you. When he gets close enough to see your red eyes and puffy face, his smile turns to a frown, rushing to you and bringing you into his arms, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” You shake your head, burning it into his chest. The warmth in his arms is comforting, something you’ve found the last few weeks.

“No.” Steve pulls you back, voice hard but eyes still soft on you, “Don’t lie to me, sweetheart.”

You look down, trying to blink away the tears that want to fall again, mumbling out, “Th— the other woman were just saying some things.”

“Saying what?” Steve asks.

Were they making fun of you?

Steve will not hesitate to hurt anyone that hurts you. No one can make you cry except for him, and he only wants to make you cry out of pleasure.

“They said I’m not a real woman and the—they don’t kno— know why you’re courting me.” You let out in a broken whisper.

All Steve can see is red.

How dare they say such things to you.

How dare they question him, question his actions.

He wont stand for it.

“Come on.” Steve grabs your hand, dragging you back to the dorms. You don't try to pull away, following obediently. Steve doesn't even bother knocking politely to make sure everyone was decent,not caring he wasn't technically allowed in the women's cabin.

When the door swings open with a bang, Steve charging in, the women gasp.

“Steve!” Sharon stands up, ending resting on her chest, “Goodness you scared up.”

He does nothing but glare at her and her little group of bitter, single church woman. He pulls you in front of him, not turning his glare away from the others in the room when he addresses you, “Pack your things up, angel.”

“Oh, is she leaving the retreat?” One of the woman speak up, watching as you move to follow the order.

Steve can hear the underlining amusement in her question, and the red starts to turn to black, “No, she's not. She will be staying in my cabin, with me.”

All the women’s eyes go wide at the harshness of his words, how scary he looks.

“Do you think that’s appropriate?” Sharon speaks up, the only one that seems to not be affected by his tone, acting as if his eyes weren't piercing through her.

Steve smirks darkly, turning to you, having finished repacking your bags and was now watching them all innocently, “Go stand outside sweetheart, I’ll be there in a second.”

“Okay.” You nod.

Steve waits until the door closes behind you before he moves his gaze back to the other four women, “This ends here. If you ever say or do anything the hurts her again, I will not hesitate to make you lives a living hell. And believe me, my hell is a lot worse than the one we preach about. Do I make myself clear?”

The woman all nod their heads, fear in 3 of their eyes, one with distaste. Steve leaves,heading outside and grabbing your bag from your hands and interlacing your fingers together as he leads you to the cabin he's been assigned.

“Come on, sweetheart. Lets go get you settled, yeah?”

“Steve,” You pull on his hand to get his attention, “I can’t stay with you. Its not proper.” Whispering the last sentence.

Steve laughs softly, “It’s okay. I’ll handle it. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

And Steve means that. He’s not letting you out of his sight again.

The cabin Steve was put in is very small, just a small lounge room, bedroom, and bathroom in it. All the furniture, like the rest of the cabins, is old and outdated.

By the time you've unpacked your bag again, it’s time for you and Steve to go to the dinning hall for dinner.

Steve keeps you glued to his side all night, not that you complained. It’s something you've grown accustomed too since courting him. It’s probably normal to always want to be close to your significant other, so you assume that’s why Steve does it.

One of the elders come up and ask Steve some questions regarding the reasoning for you not staying in the women dorms anymore, giving Steve a smile after he reiterates some of the story why, “You’re a good man Steve, looking out for your lady like that. That’s what a husband does.”

“Thank you.” Steve shakes his hand, as the last sentence of the man runs through your mind.

That’s what a good husband does.

You’ve only been courting Steve for a few months, but comments around the two of you getting married have been happening around the church more frequently. You’re not sure if you’re ready for marriage, ready to be a wife.

But then again, it’s the one thing your parents have always tried to prepare you for. How to be the perfect church wife.

It makes since, you suppose, that you and Steve will get married one day. Everything just happening much faster than you were aware.

Are you in love with Steve though?

Sometimes you think you are. You know you at least care for him deeply and you suppose that’s a part of being in love with someone. You do enjoy spending time with him, even when you get a little uneasy when he asks you to do things that seem bad. He always assures you it’s okay though, and you know Steve wouldn’t lie to you.

He has no reason to.

After dinner, Everyone heads to one of the outside chapels to listen to a message and sing some worship songs, before retiring to their beds.

When you enter the cabin, you stop by the couch in the lounge room, “I should sleep here.”

Steve furrows his brows at you, shaking his head, “Absolutely not.”

“It’s more proper—“

“Angel.” Steve cuts you off, “What kind of man would I be if I had my girl sleeping on the couch when there’s a perfectly fine bed 10 feet away.”

You shift awkwardly where you stand, “I just don’t want people to talk.”

Steve smiles brightly, walking over to you and rubbing your arms in what he wants to be a comforting notion, “Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’ll take care of anyone that says something bad.”

“Okay.” You say quietly, Steve’s smile growing wider at your acceptance. You both quietly get ready for bed, changing your clothes and brushing your teeth.

You’ve never shared a bed with anyone before, and as you crawl underneath the covers, you can’t help but be a little timid, staying almost on the edge of your side.

When Steve gets in bed, he looks over at you and frowns, “Why are you all the way over there?”

“I— I’m nervous.”

Steve chuckles, “Why you nervous, baby?” grabbing your arm softly and pulling you closer to him.

You shrug, “I don't know. I’ve never shared a bed before. You aren't supposed to.”

“Mmm.” Steve nods, tilting your chin up so you look at him as he tucks some of your hair behind your ear, “That’s true. But it’s okay for us to share a bed.”

“It is?”

“Of course it is.” Steve smiles, “We just can’t have sex.”

Your eyes go wide at his words, putting you in a flustered state like every other time he uses such crass langue.

Steve’s smile turns to a smirk as he gently pushes your back down onto the pillows and bed, moving himself to be positioned on top of you, “Which we won’t. But, since we do get to share a bed this week, we should at least have a little fun, right?”

You blink up at him as his hands move to the bottom of your sleep top, taking it off and throwing it to the floor, his mouth effectively finding your bare breasts underneath. This is something Steve has done before. One of those ‘‘you feel like you shouldn’t be doing’’ things from earlier. But it does feel good, and you trust Steve.

A small moan leaves your lips, making Steve’s dick harden even more. He’s been hard since he he saw you crying earlier. He doesn't like that those women hurt your feelings, but he's not upset about the fact he gets to share bed with you all week, which give him the opportunity to do whatever he wants to you.

Well, not whatever he wants, considering he can’t have sex with you. But he can still use your body for pleasure in other ways.

And he will.

He positions himself better between your legs, making them spread around him as his clothed hips meet yours. His hand massages one of your breasts and his mouth envelopes the other. He moans around your hardened nipple, savoring the breathless gasps from you. He switches to the other, making both your breasts plumb with his mouth.

Once he is satisfied with your breasts, he uses his hands to get rid of your shorts, leaving you in only your underwear. His right hand goes to rub over your mound, making you closing your eyes as you arch your back into him at the feeling. He continues rubbing you over your underwear until an evident wet patch is formed.

His cock is unbearably stiff to a point he can’t handle anymore and he removes himself from you, throwing his clothes on the ground with yours.

You’ve never been bare at the same time, and despite the fact you still have your underwear on, your heart starts beating faster out of the implication of what this might mean.

“It’s alright.” Steve assures you, having seen the fear in your eyes at the lack of clothes for both of you, “Just need a little bit, Angel. Just a little release. We won’t have sex, promise.”

He grabs the fabric of your panties, slowly moving them down your legs, until it’s discarded on the floor with the rest of the clothes. His voice is thick with lust and wanting, a sprinkle of darkness in it you don’t properly hear due to heartbeat in your ears, “Just need a little bit, baby.” He says, looking down at your body. But you don’t think he’s even really talking to you.

He slowly, so slowly you think he’s waiting for you to say something, brings his hips closer to yours, groaning loudly at the contact of his bare skin on yours. He has to close his eyes so he doesn't just dive right in, taking you here and now.

We can’t have sex.

Steve knows that. He knows he can’t just devour you right now. All of his plans would be ruined. But god does he want to. He didn't think anything could feel better than when he has your mouth around him. But this, his dick slowly sliding through the lips of your pussy?

Heaven. He has entered heaven.

If anything, it just makes him harder at the thought of what it will feel like when he can actually be inside you.

Steve rubs himself against harder, his cock finding a home between your lips and he groans, rubbing himself faster. He knows you’re getting something out of the friction too when your low whimpers turn to loud moans. He wants more, and needs a way to ground himself, grasping your wrists, forcing them above your head.

“God, baby.” Steve moans out, cock sliding through your wet lips. Hips rutting against yours almost painfully. His balls slabbing against you with each thrust, “Feel so good. My good girl. So good.”

He looks down at you, and he thinks this is where you look the most perfect, underneath him, completely at his mercy. The friction of his cock rubbing against your clit causes you to shake as you come, and again, like the very first time he made you come, he relishes in the knowledge that he will be the only one to ever know how you look when you do. He will be the only one to ever make you come.

“Steve.” You cry out in a whine as he continues to rub his cock over your clit, riding you through your orgasm. It’s too much, feels like to much for you. But Steve doesn't stop, instead, rubbing himself against you harder and faster.

“Just a little more, sweetheart.” His voice is hoarse as he tries to keep control of himself, “Let me just use you a little more, okay? Doing so good for me.”

His words, his praise, the fact he hasn't stopping with his attack on your clit, all push you over the edge again, making you shake as practically shriek at the feeling of your second orgasm. You have to close your eyes due to the black spots in your vision.

It pushes Steve over the edge, seeing you lose yourself like that, his head dropping down to your neck again as his finishes with you. His come spurts out over your stomach, thighs, and cunt, mixing his wetness with yours.

He looks down to you as he starts to come down, blissed and covered in him, it makes him hard again, but he has some of his self control back. That control doesn’t stop him from rubbing his come over your breasts and stomach, mixing his own scent in with yours. He hums when he’s done, leaning down to give you a soft kiss to your lips and releasing your wrists. You’re desperately trying to stay awake, the festivities of two orgasms exhausting your body.

Steve lays back down on his stomach, not bothering to clean either of you up.

He wanted to mark you.

He pulls you, so you’re laying on his chest and chuckles when you try to stay awake, “Sleep, sweetheart. We have all long week ahead of us.”

And Steve can’t wait for it.

********

Taglist: @mansaaay @sofi1sstuff @sidechrisporn @namelesssav @spencerreidsthings @withasideofmeg @sidechrisporn @dontbescaredtosingalong @katiebby04 @emberenchanted @1-800-punch-a-pimp @siriusjohnpotter @evanswife1918

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two-red-lungs · 2 years

Text

I’ll See You (In My Dreams)

Eddie x Fem!Reader Hurt/Comfort

Summary: Eddie Munson has been declared dead for five months. Five agonizing, numb months. And nobody seems to care. (Angst with happy ending)

Song Inspiration: x

The weather had turned. Oppressive summer cicadas fading to a whisper, then a deathly silence, replaced with the rasp of autumn leaves and a brilliant Hawkins forest filled with fire-orange foliage and a chill creeping into the west wind.

Not a lot of Jack-o-lanterns out this year. Not with all the ruin. Houses were still being repaired. People had left: a lot of people. A tiny, cursed town made even emptier.

But you had stayed. God help you, you had stayed.

You slammed the door to your car, rounding the front in the leaf-strewn parking lot, exhaling smoke from your cigarette. Dustin clambered out of the passenger seat and straightened his lapel.

“You ready, kid?” You asked him.

He nodded, tight lipped. You gave him a pat on the shoulder over his jacket, crushed the cigarette butt under your heel, and followed him into the Hawkins church graveyard.

The earthquake hadn’t touched it. Thank god for small mercies. The little quaint rows of dark graves, lichen-dusted and overgrown, were in disturbed. You wove through the rows. It was quiet. Crows called from the forest. Most of the headstones were old, but there were quite a few fresh ones. Too many.

You were only here for one.

A small one. Simple grey granite. Simple engraving. Everything else has been too expensive: too far out of Wayne’s budget.

Christ. Just seeing it made your heart seize.

There were no flowers on Eddie Munson’s grave. They kept getting stolen. People muttering about how he didn’t deserve them. You couldn’t muster the strength, the fire to hate them anymore.

“Can I, uh.” You said tightly to the open air. To Dustin, standing behind you. “Can I have a moment? Alone?”

He swallowed and ducked his head. “Yeah. Sure. Of course.” He ambled back, away towards the church. Giving you space.

You breathed. Inhale, exhale. That’s what the therapist had said to do, anyway. Just breathe. She made it sound so easy. But nowadays your chest felt so tight, all the fucking time. “Edward Munson”, the headstone read. “1966-1986″. The engraving of a cherub angel right below it: wings spread, hands cupping its face, eyes shut. “Gone, but never forgotten.”

An empty grave. They never recovered his body. Too dangerous.

“...Hi.” God, your voice was so shaky. Ruined from the chain-smoking, now. “Uh, Eds. Hey. I, um. Miss you. Hope wherever you are,” you paused to look around at the weak, dappled autumn light coming through the dying forest, “it’s better than this place. Somewhere with sun. And free booze. And lots of, uh, babes in bikinis running around, because you’d probably be into that.” You smiled for a half-second. It faded fast.

“Wayne’s okay. He’s still working. Gotta keep the lights on, and stuff. I’ve been spending more time with him. Keeping him company, you know? I cook him dinner a lot. We watch movies. Sometimes we sit out on the porch and smoke. He... uh, he doesn’t like to talk about you. I think it hurts him too much. And fuck, who could blame him for that?”

Great. Fuck. Here comes the tears. A knot in your throat, heat in your eyes, blurring your vision.

“...Hey, do you, um. Do you remember our best date? December, when we got snowed-in at my place? And we tried to dig your van out of the snowbank with fucking.... plastic toy shovels because I didn’t have a real one,” You were grinning again, looking at the grass between your feet, tears damp on your lashes, “And you were just so frustrated you threw yours into the neighbor’s yard? And then we just looked at each-other and burst out laughing? God. That was so fun. And then you, uh. Then you kissed me.

“...God. God. Fucking jesus christ sonovabitch motherfucker I fucking-” you choked. “I miss you. I fucking miss you. So much, every fucking day. Sometimes I feel like I wake up with a fucking hole in my chest, like someone has punched straight through me, Eddie, and I don’t know what to fucking do I miss you so much.”

You wiped your face. Wet, hot water on cold skin. “Ugh. I’m a mess. And I’m a smoker, now, too. I found a... a pack, you left in my room, and it all sort of spiraled from there. I keep finding you, do you know that? It’s like you’re everywhere I look. Your favorite music playing on my cassette mix. Your laugh coming from someone else. Your shirts hanging in my closet. Sometimes, I swear, I fall asleep at night and think I can still smell your stupid hair product on my fucking pillow. I miss you. I miss you.”

The headstone was silent and unresponsive. An autumn breeze ruffled the weeds.

“Our anniversary is coming up. October 30th. Basically Halloween. First date we ever went on: the corn maze. You scared the shit out of me, jumping out of the maze wall like that. The look on your face when I punched you was... god, it was priceless. It was perfect.” More tears. Fucking tears. You were so tired of tears: tired of how they wrung you out like wet rag every night. “What we had... was perfect. Some real, actual fairytale shit. The knight and the princess. It was good. God, Eddie, it was so good.

“And you know what the worst part of it was?” You turned your face up to the sky, at that clear, unrelenting blue. “I think I fell in love with you. Right at the end. Right when the daffodils were starting to bloom in the spring. You looked at me, in the van, and I just realized... I realized I was in fucking love with you. And I never got to say the words out loud.”

You let yourself have your moment. You let yourself cry. Standing there, cold and tired and sleep-deprived and reeking like burnt tobacco, in front of the grave everyone else reviled.

It passed. It left you hollow.

You pulled your jacket tighter. “At least I have my dreams, right? I see you there. Like every night: you’re just standing there smiling at me. I loved that smile so much, Eddie-bear. Big megawatt smile. Mister Sunshine.” You fumbled for another cigarette, lighting it and taking a drag. “I, uh. I gotta go. Dustin needs a ride home, and I need to go clean the trailer for Wayne before he gets back from work. But I’ll come back. I’ll always come back. I promise.”

Another breeze. Shifting grass stalks. The crow on the distant tree branch squawked and took flight, a blot of black against cerulean blue.

You looked over your shoulder towards the stone church, catching Dustin’s eye and jerking your head to call him over. He tromped over the patches of weeds. “I’m done. You can... you can say what you need to.”

He paled. “I’m okay. I just wanted to visit.”

You bumped his shoulder with yours. “It’s nice of you. I’m sure he’d appreciate it.”

He went even paler. His throat bobbed. “Yeah.”

“Let’s get you home.”

Dustin waved goodbye to the car in his driveway, dodged his mother’s doting kisses in the living room, and hauled the phone and extended cord into his room, firmly shutting the door and sitting down heavily on his bed. He took a moment to run a hand through his mass of curls and blow air between his lips before reaching for the dial and punching the number in. A number he knew by heart: he didn’t dare write it down.

A ringing line. A click. Silence.

“...It’s Dustin. Dustin Henderson. I need to speak to him.”

The agent’s voice was gruff on the other end of the line. “Kid, you can’t keep calling this number. It’s for emergencies.”

“I know. I know.” Dustin wetted his lips and crossed his legs on the mattress. “Can I just... for a few minutes? Please? I’ll make it fast.”

The agent sighed, low and tired. There was shuffling on the other end of the line, the sound of movement. “It’s the Henderson kid. You have five minutes.” The agent said faintly.

The phone readjusted.

“You know, every time this thing rings I think the world is ending a second goddamn time.”

“Eddie.” Dustin breathed, grinning at his bedroom wall.

“Hey, pipsqueak.”

“Man, it’s good to hear your voice.”

“Yeah, well...” There was a grunt, and a shuffle: Eddie, moving away from his designated agent, taking the phone with him. “The whole point of this witness protection shit is that you don’t, right?”

“How are you holding up?”

A dry, derisive laugh. “Well, considering I’m in the middle of goddamn nowhere, being babysat by some big asshole with a gun, eating microwave soup for lunch every day, with an entire state still wanting me for murder and everyone else thinking I’m a worm-filled corpse, not too bad.”

“...I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”

Eddie heaved a sigh. Dustin could see him in his mind’s eye, a hand running down his face like he always did when he was exasperated. “It’s fine, man, it’s fine. I appreciate it, actually. Nice to talk to someone who doesn’t communicate almost exclusively in grunts. I’ve got, like, crazy cabin fever.”

“Have they told you how much longer you need to stay there?”

“No, man. They have not. I’m guessing until the fucking... satanic panic shit dies down and people stop writing articles on ‘Edward Munson, the devil of Indiana’.”

Dustin could hear the strain in the young man’s voice. It was a heavy burden to bear. Eddie was all alone, now. The world had abandoned him. And everyone save for Dustin and a handful of agents that had retrieved him and revived him even knew he was alive. It was for his protection, they told him. There was no way to clear his name, not really. Not ever. He’d always have this staining his name. All he could do now was start again.

“I’m really, really sorry, Eddie.”

“I know. I know you are.” The line was silent for a moment. “So why’d you call, man? Did you really miss your dear old DM that much?”

“Are you alone right now?”

“Yeah. Mr. Impassive just stepped out for a cigarette. What’s up?”

“She visited your grave again today.”

A muffled swear followed by several more, and a long, drawn-out beat of silence. “She did? God. Christ. Fuck.”

“She visits like, every three days. Ever since your uncle had the headstone installed.”

“Fuck. Fuck.” Another pause. Again, Dustin knew so clearly that Eddie was probably hanging his head right now, probably running a hand through his even longer hair. “I really fucking miss her, man.” His voice wobbled.

“I know.”

“That’s my girl. And she thinks I’m dead.”

“She doesn’t have to.” Before Eddie could say anything, Dustin launched forward. “Eddie, I think I should tell her.”

“What? Are you insane?” Eddie hissed.

“Just- just hear me out, okay? Isn’t this the same girl who kept your relationship secret from everyone for months? And nobody suspected a thing? The same girl who you dealt to for like, three whole years, and not even her friends knew she smoked? If anyone can keep a secret, it’s her.”

“I know that, man, she’s- goddamn perfect. Henderson, you can’t tell her. Do you even- fuck, do you know how much danger that would put her in? Hawkins thinks I’m a serial killer.”

“Eddie, she needs to know. It’s wrecking her. She’s even stopped going to college.”

A throaty noise of pain escaped Munson over the phone. “I know. I know. I just... fuck. I want her to know, so bad. Jesus Christ, you think I don’t want her to know? I’d cut off my own arm just to see her again. But it’s too risky. And the government goons would be pissed.”

Dustin pulled out his trump card. “Eddie... she said she was in love with you.”

Silence. Utter silence.

“At the church today. I had to stand there and listen to her say she loved you, that she still loves you, and that she never got to tell you. And I had to just... act sad, like I thought you were dead too. I don’t know how much longer I can lie to her.”

“...She said she loves me?”

“Yeah, man.”

The quiet was deafening. It went on for so long Dustin was wondering if the call had disconnected.

“Do it.” Eddie’s voice was tight.

“What?”

“Do it. Tell her.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. But, Dustin, man... do it gentle, okay?” Eddie’s voice had taken on a soft, wounded tone. A hurt Dustin hadn’t heard before. “Do it so fucking gentle. And tell her... tell her I love her. Tell her I love the shit out of her. That I have since the shovels.”

“...The shovels?”

“She’ll know what I mean.”

They chatted for a few more minutes. Somber and low: about Wayne, about Hawkins repairs, about Steve and Nancy and Garette and the rest of his band-mates. And then the agent stepped back in from his smoke break and commandeered the phone, severing their connection with a click. Dustin was left alone, holding the plastic phone to his ear, staring out the window and watching the sun track across the neighborhood outside.

He ran a hand down his face. A habit he’d picked up in school from the metal-head. One more night, he promised himself. He’d tell her tomorrow. Shatter her entire world, re-open her wounds, flip reality on its head.

But tonight, she could still have her dreams.

#I Have Emotions about edward munson #eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson imagine #stranger things s4 #throws myself dramatically on a couch like a starlet from the 20s

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queenlucythevaliant · 8 months

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Here's what I'll say regarding choice of worship music (and I'm not 100% sure where I'm going with this, so bear with me): I think it's very easy to get burned out on specific kinds of worship, no matter what they are. And that kind of burn-out is hard.

I grew up at a church that did 95% CCM for worship, and after a while it either (a) exhausted me emotionally or (b) bored me. By the time I hit high school, I really really struggled with corporate worship because it felt as though I wasn't responding as I was supposed to. Getting to sing mostly hymns at the church I attended at college was a huge breath of fresh air, and it helped me immensely in terms of re-orienting my heart towards Christ-centered worship (as opposed to me-centered worship.) For the first time in my life, I found myself listening to Christian music on my own time during the week.

I watched the recent Jesus Revolution movie with mom over the summer. Her family started attending Calvary Chapel (then-nascent hippy church in Orange County) midway through her childhood, and she got really excited talking about the difference between the hymns she remembered from early elementary school ("we sang the whole hymnal rather than selecting for the really good ones like they do at your church") and the much more dynamic music that came out of Maranatha and other early "contemporary" Christian groups. She actually played me a whole bunch of the songs she grew up with the next morning. They sounded horrifically cheesy to me, but she got real joy out of it and even ended up texting a few songs to my aunt.

And yet, my mom has remarked a whole bunch of times to me that she really can't stand current CCM; that she desperately misses singing the old hymns. I look at myself and my own experience and I can totally see myself coming back to some of the CCM songs I grew up with and encountering Christ through them all new again. As recently as last month, I had a really beautiful experience driving back from a concert crazy late at night with my sister and listening to some of the old Chris Tomlin and Hillsong stuff that I hadn't heard in a while. It brought me back to a sense of incredible comfort and safety nestled up against God like a baby chick. Do I want to worship with that sort of music every week right now? No, definitely not. But it has its place.

Obviously worship transcends something as incidental as music genre. It's an expression of why we were created: glorifying God and enjoying him forever --- and yet, because of the fall, it's really easy to get burned out on specific expressions of worship. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing so much as just a symptom of the fall. I also think that people who are really burned out on a particular kind of worship can be really, really obnoxious about it. I know I was for a while, and I still definitely have my hangups with CCM.

But like- I don't think it's so much about judgement or superiority towards the kind of worship music that you're burnt out on as it is just the overwhelming sense that that kind of worship music felt exhausting and this kind of music actually feels like I'm able to worship again. I know when I started singing hymns at church, it just felt like I'd found the Rosetta Stone. I was suddenly so much less in my own head on Sunday mornings and oh my goodness singing to God was a joy again and I can't remember but I don't think it's ever been a joy like this before has it?? It was almost like my head was spinning with some great new revelation and when I was obnoxious about it it was mostly a manifestation of my being like Why didn't anyone ever tell me it could be like this? Why isn't everyone singing hymns? It's just so much better this way!

Mostly, it just feels like saying "don't be overly critical of how other Christians like to worship" kind of. Misses the trees for the forest, if that makes sense? Like, it's accurate to the big picture, it's absolutely a true and worthwhile thing to say. But at the same time it kind of rankles for me because it misses how it feels to be truly and deeply alienated by the kind of worship you're exposed to.

For better and for worse, worship is (I think) the spiritual discipline that engages the emotions most directly. The feeling of being in a group of people all worshipping together, and your heart just isn't responding right no matter how you try to re-focus and orient it? It's one of the loneliest feelings I know.

#long and rambling #what else is new #I've been chewing on a couple of the worship posts floating around (from liz kaylie and ella? i think?)#they're all very good and true posts and yet i was having sort of prickly reactions to them #not defensive exactly so much as just. hypersensitive? idk #so I've been mulling and this is what I've got on the subject #also worth noting that a lot of this is tangled up with my very-concurrent experiences with chronic illness #and all the grief and emotion-in-God's-direction thereof #anyway #only thou art holy #pontifications and creations #sunday school kid #unproofed. if there are any big errors I'll fix later. it's crazy late and i should not be posting on Tumblr #do please chime in if you've had similar experiences and let me know I'm not crazy lol

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dejablonde · 3 months

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So I had to write a personal narrative for composition class. I wrote about post-ritual depression leading to a career change, and I thought ghumblr might enjoy. It's only 763 words (after padding it out with some extra academic phrasing) but I don't want to clog your feeds too much so it's below the cut.

"Have you ever like something so much that it rewired your brain?"

Have you ever liked something so much that it rewired your brain? I can’t pinpoint exactly when I first heard the band called “Ghost,” but it was most likely sometime in 2022. I think the first video (from whichever of the dozen algorithms we get our content from today) pushed to my feed was their performance on Jimmy Kimmel, where they played their song Call Me Little Sunshine. I was taken aback by their theatrical look and sound. I listened to a few more songs, became a casual listener, and even bought their latest album when I came across it at Josey Records. What I can pinpoint, however, is the day I turned feral: April 9, 2023, Easter Sunday.

Being only a casual listener still, I was curious as to what was going on when I saw that Ghost was trending on Tumblr. As I scrolled through the tag, it became more and more clear that, not only had they had dropped new music, but a new music video to match, almost entirely without warning: a cover of Phil Collins’ Jesus He Knows Me. Of course, I had to listen. From the driving intro into the first verse, to the poppy chorus, to the lyrics addressing hypocrisy from the church and its leaders, it was almost like twenty-eight years of religious trauma were healed in four minutes and five seconds, as if it were that easy. I wasn’t cured, but they certainly made a dent. I listened to it on repeat and branched into the rest of their discography. After two weeks, I finally caved and bought myself a pit ticket to their upcoming Dallas tour date.

When the day finally came, five months later, I could barely contain myself. I felt if I could leap hard enough, I would jump right out of my skin. I had taken advantage of the fact that I had the previous day off from work and pretended that I was taking a small trip for Labor Day. This allowed me the day off for the concert. My employers already think I’m strange enough; I didn’t see any need to make it worse by asking for time off to line up for a concert by a Satanic rock band hours early on a Tuesday. Despite the 103-degree weather that day, I made it to the general admission line around noon. I chatted with my new line buddies over the next several hours about the band, how we got into them, and a little bit about our lives in general over the water that the venue security provided. For the first time in a while, I was surrounded by people like me.

They say that concerts can be a religious experience. I’m not sure I agree, but they’re not exactly wrong. It really is overwhelming, or at least can be. Many aspects are similar, if not the same. Between the community and camaraderie with your fellow “congregants” and the feeling of the music all the way down to your bones, there’s certainly something that happens internally. This concert (or ritual, as Ghost fans lovingly call them) was no exception. After all, when you’re a stone’s throw away from your obsession, bathed in light and confetti, you can’t help but feel a little changed.

Post-concert depression is a very real and powerful force. It’s even stronger when you come back to work after finally feeling happy and rested only to be met with snideness not even fifteen minutes into the day. I was already dealing with years of declining morale. I wanted to be happy again, like I was the night before. I started looking at job postings immediately. I nearly got one in the same field but interviewed poorly. Eventually, I decided to make up for lost time and try to make a move into what my high-school-aged-self wanted. Or at least something close. Unfortunately, even though apprenticeship-type situations are common in the music industry, it’s very hard to break in without any kind of provable experience. I looked into some recording technology schools but didn’t really feel the need to go into debt on a loan for them. I was about to lose hope, but then I had a lightbulb moment and found that Dallas College has a program for Recording Technology. My application and registration were late in the game, but I was able to squeeze in before the start of this semester. Now, I’m finally doing something I want to do, and it’s all thanks to a funky little Swede in black and white makeup.

#the band ghost #papa emeritus iv #papa emeritus iii #papa emeritus ii #papa emeritus i #nameless ghouls #nameless ghoulettes #tobias forge #toblerone fudge #tender father #post-concert depression #DejaBlonde #my writing

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a-queer-seminarian · 5 months

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Hey Avery, I love this blog and the binary-breakers blog. They’ve both been a great help to me as I reconstruct my faith. But I’m struggling with something: my fiancé and I are scheduled to light an advent candle during the Sunday morning service at his church. Initially I was really looking forward to it, but by chance I was curious about how old Mary was when she bore Jesus, and when I looked it up I learned she could have been anywhere from 13-16. Moreover, some traditions put Joseph as being much, much older. It’s just hard not to think in a very . . . sinister direction when considering that context, especially as far as God’s role in this is concerned. What did you learn about this topic in seminary, if anything? Is there any hope that my “problematic” interpretation is unnecessary/invalid?

Hi there! I think it's lovely y'all are going to light an advent candle tomorrow, and I hope it's a meaningful experience! I also totally get your dismay about Mary's age at Jesus's birth.

To start with the facts: yes, Mary was almost certainly a teenager when betrothed to Joseph. The Bible doesn't give any confirmation of her age, but in both ancient Jewish culture and Roman culture, girls were usually married off not too many years after they started menstruating.

When it comes to Joseph's age, I do have some slightly relieving news — he's unlikely to have been the old man he's often depicted as in medieval art. (I actually had a fascinating conversation on this topic with queer Catholic art historian Amy Neville on my podcast that you can read or listen to here!) He almost certainly would have been older than Mary, but it's uncertain how much older.

In ancient Jewish culture, the "ideal" marriage was actually one between a man and a woman who were both in their teens, with an expectation that a man marry by age 20. Being able to support a wife & kids was a key indicator of manhood, so men were expected to get married as young as they could. But in practice, it was more common for men to marry in their late 20s / by age 30, which does mean that their wives would often be a good ten or fifteen years younger than they were.

The Bible doesn't tell us what age Joseph was when he and Mary were betrothed, but it's unlikely he was older than 30, just as it's unlikely she was older than 18.

So maybe that's not quite as discomfiting as the image of a much older Joseph, but by our modern standards, it's still pedophilia. So what do we make of that? And what did God think of that??

I believe it is an act of faith to be troubled by elements of scripture that should be troubling, rather than shrugging them off as being "God's will" just because they're in the Bible. I highly recommend Rachel Held Evans' book Inspired on this topic, which has a whole chapter on grappling with difficult biblical texts (you can read a long passage from it here).

While exploring our emotions and giving them holy space, it is also important to accept that biblical cultures are two thousand or more years old — the ancient world had completely different understandings of morality from us. That doesn't mean we shrug off displays of sexism or xenophobia in scripture — bigotry is bigotry, whether an ancient iteration or what we have today — but learning about biblical cultures enriches our understanding of why certain things, like slavery or women having little say in whom they marry, are present in the Bible (and often completely taken for granted by its human authors). It can help us distinguish between what is truly God-ordained, versus what the humans writing down their experience of God presume is God-ordained.

I appreciate how womanist theologian Wil Gafney explores the complexity of appreciating the Bible as an ancient human text while looking for Divine truth "between the lines":

“There is liberation in the gospel even though it is sometimes obscured by the structures of power that benefit from holding people captive. There is also a story in and between the lines of and behind the text we hold so dear that points to a liberation that not even the authors and editors of scripture were able to see clearly or, see their way to record.

Jesus was a rabbi, he would have never wanted us to cling to the letters and syntax of these texts as though they were his very body and blood but rather, his spirit and the Spirit of God, blow through them, ruffling and disturbing them and permitting us to read new truths in and out of them and, not lose sight of the ancient stories that are also part of our shared heritage."

___

When it comes to Mary's young age when betrothed to Joseph and approached by Gabriel to request her "yes" to carrying God's child, your question of God's "role" in that is a vital one to ask.

In Mary's world, a woman without a kyrios, a man to be her protector, was in a very precarious position. Mary has to be betrothed to someone in her teens. We don't know whether God "approves" of this cultural practice, but we can see how God works within this custom to ensure Mary's security throughout her life:

when Joseph plans to divorce her after she becomes pregnant with Jesus, God sends an angel to persuade him to stick by her;

when Jesus is dying on the cross, he ensures that his beloved will protect Mary after he's gone.

Throughout scripture, God largely seems to operate within a people's cultural expectations (with key exceptions, like how God insists Their people treat foreigners the same as members of the group, or when God warns against giving the people a king just because that's what all the other nations have). That's what I see here. Mary must have a husband to be secure in her culture, and I imagine God ensuring that that husband will be one who will treat her well.

Then there's the question of God espousing Mary — of the Holy Spirit "overshadowing" her so that she conceives Jesus. What exactly is this "overshadowing" act? Why is God getting a teen girl pregnant?

Again, Rev. Wil Gafney provides words that wrestle out the good news with this complexity. When reading Luke 1, she urges us to sit with our distress at the image of a powerful "male" figure (Gabriel) approaching a teen girl to tell her what's going to happen to her body:

"Sit with me in this moment, this uncomfortable moment, before rushing to find proof of her consent, or argue that contemporary notions of consent do not apply to ancient texts, or God knew she’d say yes so it was prophetic, or contend that (human) gender does not apply to divine beings, Gabriel or God, and the Holy Spirit is feminine anyway. Hold those thoughts and just sit in the moment with this young woman."

Our distress is holy; it shows our connection to a fellow human being, our thirst for justice. Honor what you feel, don't discard your emotions, even while you join them to sociohistorical understanding.

I highly recommend you read Gafney's whole article, but here's a little more from it that balances ancient culture with modern ethics:

"Yet in a world which did not necessarily recognize her sole ownership of her body and did not understand our notions of consent and rape, this very young woman had the dignity, courage, and temerity to question a messenger of the Living God about what would happen to her body before giving her consent. That is important. That gets lost when we rush to her capitulation. Before Mary said, “yes,” she said, “wait a minute, explain this to me.” ... Did the Ever-Blessed Virgin Mary say, “me too?” Perhaps not. A close reading shows her presumably powerless in every way but sufficiently empowered to talk back to the emissary of God, determine for herself, and grant what consent she could no matter the power of the One asking. And yet in that moment after being told by someone else what would happen to her body, she became not just the Mother of God, but the holy sister to those of us who do say, “Me too.” "

Because Mary was a teen girl, an impoverished Palestinian Jew living under empire, she can extend solidarity to people across all time who experience similar oppression, whose bodily autonomy is equally precarious. Just as her son, God in human flesh, extends solidarity to all who have ever been arrested or executed under an unjust state through his crucifixion. Divine power is expressed in and through those whom the world denigrates and discards — that's why God chose Mary, and why Mary in turn chose God.

Sorry this got so long and has a lot of complex stuff to wrestle with. I honor your courage to ask the hard questions, and I hope you are able to take time throughout Advent to keep pondering! There are no easy answers, but wrestling can yield a blessing.

#mary tag #advent #annunciation #reading and studying the Bible

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vavuska · 1 year

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Stephanie Meyer in her“The Twilight Saga: Official Illustrated Guide” wrote that vampire pallor is part of the transformation new vampires undergo that beautifies them as their melanin drains away, resulting in their white skin.

In fact, in the first chapter, in which she describes the physical characteristics common to all vampires, Meyer wrote:

In the Twilight universe all vampires were originally human. As vampires, they retain a close physical resemblance to their human form, the only reliably noticeable differences being a universal pallor of skin, a change in eye color, and heightened beauty.

More orver the typical vampire pallor is not attribuite, as traditional thrope impose, to the fact that vampires are dead, recalling the repulsive look of a corpse, but to an element of crystalline, supernatural form of beauty, which is described as following:

The common factor of beauty among vampires is mostly due to this crystalline skin. The perfect smoothness, gloss, and even color of the skin give the illusion of a flawless face.

So, dark skinned or deeper skin toned people will have very light olive skin as vampires. In fact the only creature who keeps a natural dark-skin is Nahuel, the vampire-human hybrid (born to a white European vampire and a indigenous woman), who is described having “dark brown skin”, while his Aunt Huilen, a full-indigenous woman has “an olive tone to her pale skin” due to being a vampire. Let's see more examples in the book where this “white washing” effect of vampirism is more explicit:

Vampires in Stephanie Meyer's books are white and pure because Mormons believe people who are not white will be white in heaven. I can't 100% remember the reason or events but during some event they think God turned some people black because they either betrayed him or Jesus. So when you are a good person and go to heaven he will remove that. If you look into what Mormons believe it's almost as crazy as scientology.

Ok, apparently, Mormons think black and dark-skinned people are in some way descendants of Cain, who was banished from human community and condamned by God to a nomadic life. However, God was pleased by blood sacrifice (God favored Abel who killed animals for God, while Cain offered the products of earth he cultivated) and gives Cain a mark, known as “Mark of Cain” (Genesis 4:15). This mark of Cain is God's promise to offer Cain divine protection from premature death with the stated purpose of preventing anyone from killing him. Bible does not identify the exact nature of the mark God put on Cain. Whatever it was, it was a sign/indicator that Cain was not to be killed (but also a warn that helped others to spot him as a murder to not trust). Some propose that the mark was a scar, or some kind of tattoo (Maybe this is the source of Tattoo Prohibition in Leviticus 19:28). Whatever the case, the precise nature of the mark is not the focus of the passage. The focus is that God would not allow people to exact vengeance against Cain. Whatever the mark on Cain was, it served this purpose.

However, Brigham Young, one of the founders of Mormons and one of the earliest leader, described black people as cursed with dark skin as punishment for Cain’s murder of his brother. “Any man having one drop of the seed of Cane in him cannot hold the priesthood,” he declared in 1852. Young deemed black-white intermarriage so sinful that he suggested that a man could atone for it only by having “his head cut off” and spilling “his blood upon the ground.”

For more information about the racial question among Mormons, I suggest this article of New York Times:

#vavuskapakage #twilight #twilight saga #the twilight saga #stephanie meyer #edward cullen #the cullens #racism in twilight #Racism in novels #mormons #Mormon cult #Tw: racism #white washed #white washing #cullen coven #Egypt coven #vampire aesthetic #vampirism #twilight vampires

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sunnynwanda · 1 year

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Wedding date: Part 3

Part 1 Part 2 Part 4

Villain’s determination is close to failing as the ceremony nears its end. They could feel the gazes directed at them the moment they walked into the church with their ‘date’. They were lucky the bride was about to walk down the aisle, so no one made any comments. The looks, however, said it all.

The only people smiling from ear to ear were the bride and Hero. And if the bride's smile was understandable and expected, Hero was simply an idiot. An idiot with a survival instinct nonexistent in their system.

“Jesus, read the room, Hero,” Villain whispers, tilting their head to the side so no one can see their lips. Their jaw is tense, lips barely parting as they speak.

“What is it, honey?“ Their archnemesis is unfazed, still grinning like the Cheshire cat. Villain can’t decide if they’re oblivious, overly confident or plain dense. “Your grandmother seems nice - she winked at me when we walked in.”

“God, are you serious?” Exasperation laces Villain’s voice. They pinch the bridge of their nose with ice-cold fingers before speaking through gritted teeth. “Don’t let your guard down, Hero.“

“Aw, don’t worry about me,” Hero is serene as if they’re not surrounded by their rival’s entire family. This was a mistake, Villain thinks. Their hands flex anxiously, and Hero can’t help the fond smile tagging at the corners of their lips. “I’m your enemy, not theirs, remember? You’re the only Villain I ever battle.”

That’s news to Villain. News that makes something inside them flutter with joy. They suppress a growl of protest, closing their eyes for a short moment to calm the insects inside their stomach.

When Villain finally speaks, their voice is small as they utter the only phrase that comes to mind. “Excuse me?”

“All I’m saying is I’ll be fine as long as you don’t cause a riot, love,” Hero’s comment puzzles Villain further as they force their attention back to the ceremony, clapping along as the couple walks past them.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Villain can’t even remember who’s getting married at this point. The perspiration covers their forehead. What the hell is going on?

“We should move,” Hero prompts, nodding towards the exit. Villain’s eyes roam over the faces in the crowd as they pass them, searching for any hostility towards their date, but no one dares to look them in the eye.

The reception hall is quite large, but the dim lighting creates a cosy ambience. Villain swirls the wine in their glass, trying hard to focus their attention on anything other than Hero’s palm spread on their thigh. The wedding’s been going smoothly so far, with only a few strange glances from their family members. So far, Hero’s managed to charm their way into every single conversation around their table of siblings and cousins. Disgusting. Cute.

Ugh, I hate you.

Villain would sooner die than admit that having Hero next to them felt painfully natural. They were starting to understand why the city loved this bright-eyed puppy of a hero so much. Sunshine personified. Probably why they are the hero. Villain would very much like to slap that cheerful grin off. Probably why they are the villain.

Deep in thought, Villain fails to notice that Hero has left their side and someone else has taken the place.

“When I said fuck Hero, I didn’t mean it that way.” Villain chokes on their wine, head whipping around and eyes wide with terror.

Then dawns the recognition. “Grandma!“

“But you do you, I guess...” Their grandmother ignores the plea completely, shaking her head with the slyest smile possible. “Or should I say, you do them?”

“Grandma, please,” covering their face in embarrassment, Villain presses their palms against their burning cheeks. Why is it so hot in here?

Villain wishes the ground to open up and swallow them whole. Or a bolt of lightning to strike them dead. Or a goddamn comet to crush the venue. Anything, really.

“I’m kidding, darling,” Grandma chuckles, pleased with the effect. “I’m glad you found someone who cares about you.”

“You think they care about me?” Villain can’t help the hopeful intonation, but they pray their grandma won’t notice. She does, of course, smiling from ear to ear and winking at someone behind Villain’s back.

“Can’t you see how their eyes light up when they look at you?" Grandmother doesn’t wait for an answer, standing up and placing a hand on her grandchild’s rigid shoulder. "Especially in battle."

Villain blinks, their gaze absent as they turn in slow motion. The ringing in their ears blocks the music, leaving them in a strange vacuum-like state. “Gran, you know who they are, right?”

“Hero, yes. So what?” Grandma asks, offering them a knowing smile. Villain’s concerns must be evident on their face since she continues almost immediately. “When did you ever follow the conventional ways, darling?”

She pats Villain’s shoulder before walking away and leaving them in the deafening silence of their thoughts. Villain can feel nothing but their heart beating hard against their temples and the walls of their throat. They take several deep breaths and squeeze their eyes shut to ground themselves, only to be reeled off into panic upon opening them and noticing Hero waltzing towards them.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 4

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raointean · 11 months

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"Hellfire" is way too relatable to young, queer Christians (or former Christians)

I'll elaborate

Fair warning, I'll be discussing the relationship between queerness (specifically sexuality), religion, and faith, homophobia, internalized homophobia, and misdirected blame.

I'll start this off by saying I was raised in a fairly conservative church from the age of 2 onward. I learned that homosexuality was a horrible sin, but that queer people needed love and support without acceptance. Basically, hate the sin, love the sinner.

And then I figured out I liked girls and proceeded to have a months-long crisis of faith that I couldn't talk to anyone about. "Hellfire" from The Hunchback of Notre Dame was actually a super helpful song in that time because, at its core, it is a song about sexuality and religion coming into conflict. (There's also a solid dose of racism and misogyny in that song, but that's a different post)

Beata Maria

You know I am a righteous man

Of my virtue I am justly proud

As a protestant, I prayed to God instead of Mary, but here, he's talking about the pride he takes in his status within the church. He's ashamed of his feelings, so he's puffing himself up defensively. He may also be trying to show Mary, "Hey, look at all I've done for you! I've done everything you asked! Why are you cursing me with this horrid disease?"

What he doesn't understand is that it's not a disease. He's just experiencing normal, human attraction and panicking because he's been taught that those feelings absolutely cannot co-exist with his position/faith.

Beata Maria

You know I'm so much purer than

The common, vulgar, weak, licentious crowd

Again, beefing himself up here. Also revealing his pridefulness.

Then tell me, Maria

Why I see her dancing there

Why her smold'ring eyes still scorch my soul

I feel her, I see her

The sun caught in her raven hair

Is blazing in me out of all control

Women, dude. Women are gorgeous. Here, he's expressing his frustration at his own inability to control his "bad" feelings. He also seems to be asking Mary why God is punishing him with a temptation he's ill-equipped to handle. (God generally allows Christians to be tempted by such things so that we recognize how much we need Him, for anyone who's curious about the theology there).

Like fire

Hellfire

This fire in my skin

This burning

Desire

Is turning me to sin

Jesus says in Matthew 5 that thinking about sin (lust/adultery in this particular case) is just as bad as committing the sin itself in God's eyes. As I said above, God is probably trying to show Frollo that he's a sinful person just like everyone else, and shouldn't hold himself above everyone else. Unfortunately, Frollo didn't learn that lesson and, well, the rest of the movie happened.

In relation to queerness, since homosexuality is taught to be a sin, thinking about someone of the same sex as you in a romantic light is seen as just as bad as actually dating them. I use the romantic example instead of the attraction example because lust is a sin, but loving and wanting a relationship with someone is not! Young, queer people may have been taught that it is, however, which makes that last line particularly devastating.

It's not my fault

I'm not to blame

It is the g*psy girl

The witch who sent this flame

Now, he's trying to blame the person he's attracted to for his own feelings and absolve himself of blame. Unfortunately, for Christians who are discovering their attraction to fellow men or women, the guilt can be crushing! We're often taught about non-heterosexuality as one of the most taboo of sins! When you find out that you are "one of those heathen, godless gays" a lot of people will do everything in their power to get out from under the blame. Surely, it can't be their own fault! It must be the fault of the person they're attracted to, or that episode of glee they saw, or even God Himself for tempting them!

Obviously, this blame is misplaced. Queerness isn't caused. It just is. And like all of the other diversities God created, it has a place and a purpose.

It's not my fault

If in God's plan

He made the devil so much

Stronger than a man

Mood. Frollo has switched from blaming Esmeralda for his attraction to blaming God. (Also, if this were sung by a woman, that "made the devil so much stronger than a man" line takes on an entirely different meaning)

Protect me, Maria

Don't let the siren cast her spell

Don't let her fire sear my flesh and bone

Here, he's begging for protection and relief. He wants things to go back to the way they were. He wants to be free of the moral conflict instead of walking through it. It's a very relatable sentiment! Finding out that you're The Other your community has warned you about your whole life flips your world on its head!

In order to reconcile your sexuality and your faith, you cannot shy away from the conflict, no matter how painful it is! You have to do your own research. You have to think your own thoughts. You have to question everything you've been taught. But I promise, you will come out better for it.

Destroy Esmeralda

And let her taste the fires of Hell!

Or else let her be mine and mine alone

This goes deeper into the "free me from this moral conflict" point. There are really only a few ways that can be done. You can abandon your faith, repress your sexuality, or force the two to get along. Abandoning one's faith is the most common reaction in the queer community because faith, unlike sexuality, is a lifestyle you can choose. However, for a lot of people, their faith is too important to lose.

That only leaves two options. Repressing one's sexuality is usually very damaging to one's mental health. Bottling up all the guilt and shame however, is sometimes easier than doing the research and reevaluating one's worldview.

The "or else let her be mine and mine alone" is Frollo pleading with Mary to give him a way to express his sexuality in a religiously acceptable way. Luckily, that's pretty easy for queer Christians! The Bible gives a lot of tips and expectations for marriages. They are generally framed for hetero couples (because they're the most common), but they apply to homosexual couples as well. You just need to read between the lines.

Paul says in Corinthians 7 that some people should not be married at all (and I think he also implies that he's ace?). That means that ace/aro people and those in queerplatonic relationships are also still in line with the Bible! No conflict there.

Hellfire

Dark fire

Now gypsy, it's your turn

Choose me or

Your pyre

Be mine or you will burn

This is 100% Frollo making Esmeralda responsible for his feelings and not taking accountability for his actions. For the record, that is something you should definitely not do!

God have mercy on her

God have mercy on me

But she will be mine

Or she will burn!

Okay, the first two lines are nice. He's asking for clemency on Esmeralda's behalf for her (imagined) sin of seduction. Then, he asks for clemency for his own (not imagined) sin of lust (but alas, not his pride). The last two lines are a false dichotomy he's created by believing his lust is Esmeralda's fault.

In summary, this song was way too relatable to little 14-year-old me. If you are going through the same thing, don't abandon your faith and don't ignore your feelings. There's a middle ground, I promise. You just need to do your own research and think your own thoughts, as hard as that may be in practice.

Also, be careful who you ask questions to. Remember that your pastors at your conservative church, well-meaning as they may be, have a vested interest in keeping you ignorant of the queer community. Try to find both sides of the story and, if you can do so safely, talk to other queer Christians.

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