#satan is just a christian fiction

[slitsfordan]

DanandPhilCrafts + Fucked Up Queer Devotion + Christian Homophobia: An Essay

We’ve all been talking about the willingness of Dan and Phil to perform the ritual, we’ve all been talking about the intimacy of carving out your lover’s heart, but I have not heard anyone talk about the fucked up side of Dan and Phil’s (fictional) relationship with each other, and with Him, so here goes.

On the craft channel, Dan and Phil act overwhelmingly positive, like satanic children’s show hosts, but this is clearly a farce. We see them drop their smiles quite a few times during the crafting- most notably in Glitter Faces when Dan’s craft turns out wrong, and when Phil cuts Dan’s hand. “Don’t cry, craft” is directed towards the audience, but it seems Dan and Phil are following their own advice. Cults, after all, prey on vulnerable people. While they do seem scared of doing the ritual, and their involvement with Him, they are, however, definitely willing. In

The blood on Dan after he kills Phil is interesting; The handprint on his shirt isn’t a sign of a struggle, but rather Phil just grabbing his shirt- that’s pretty intimate, honestly. The blood on his face could’ve been caused by a bunch of things: blood splatter he wiped at? wiping at his face (eyes?) with a bloody hand? or Phil holding his face? (I like the third option) The blood on his nose might totally have been accidental, and just a thing that happened, but it could also be an allusion to the cat whiskers, in the spirit of bringing things back to the beginning and whatnot.

After the ritual is complete, there’s the obvious tarot symbolism. @freckliedan has a great post about this, but I’ve got more to add, so bear with me. Yes, Dan and Phil are framed as the lovers, but that’s not all. While the sexual deviance associated with the devil card has clear connections to queerness, it’s main association is usually unhealthy relationships and dependence. From this, and the obvious devotion displayed in the video, the craft versions of Dan and Phil are implied to be unhealthily dependent on each other, and devoted to the point of obsession. While the relationship certainly isn’t abusive, this obsession just isn’t healthy.

Furthering the unhealthy relationship idea is when Phil calls Dan “Sampson”. In the Bible or whatever (I’m not Christian sue me) Sampson topples these pillars, killing both himself and his enemies, which has a clear parallel to Dan’s stacked ingredients falling over, but the use of “folly” is interesting, and suggests a further connection. Sampson had married a prostitute, and she sold him out, basically, leading to his enslavement and later death. In this story, this is the clearest and most obvious act of folly by Sampson: marrying someone who he shouldn’t have, someone who it was taboo for him to be with. Connected to Dan and Phil, it suggests that their relationship is dangerous due to the social taboo, but it’s also implied that Phil will betray Dan. Perhaps we’ll see that in a 5th crafts installment, or perhaps it’s simply a commentary on being in a relationship with someone considered unacceptable.

Speaking of unhealthy relationships, that’s sure what they’ve got with Him! Leading up to the ritual, Dan and Phil are shown to be scared of Him, even though they call Him their friend. Dan’s head shake when Phil says “crafting has improved my life in numerous ways” is very telling. At the end, Dan’s shoulders tense at His first footstep, however, when He actually touches Dan, he doesn’t seem scared at all- forgive me for this next point, but from the way he kinda leans into the touch and tilts his head back, it seems more like he’s going for “turned on” rather than “scared”.

“Okay, cool” you say, “but what does it mean?” Well, Dan and Phil’s relationship in this series is not just about homoerotic undertones- this is an allegory for toxic queer sexual relationships. Why would they make something about toxic relationships when they’re in a healthy relationship? With the toxicity, and the power imbalances, and the satanism, Dan and Phil’s (fictional) relationship is a representation of Christian fears of queerness, and the supposed immoral/corrupting/anti-Christian effects of being in a queer relationship. The fear Dan and Phil show throughout the series is representative of internalized homophobia. They’re scared to align themselves with Him because it means accepting their own queerness. Dan shows more fear than Phil throughout the series (like after his glitter face turns out to be a pentacle) which parallels his real world internalized homophobia that he’s experienced. By holding hands with the devil (or baphomet?) standing behind them, Dan and Phil have embodied every conservative fear about queerness, but have come out on top. Through their YouTube channel, we get to do the same.

#in conclusion: #if DanandPhilCrafts is about anything #it’s about how it’s okay to be gay #lol #thanks for reading if you made it this far :) #I would love to hear other people’s thoughts on this! #dnp #dan and phil #phan #amazingphil #daniel howell #danandphilcrafts #dan and phil crafts #phandom analysis

[stickyphantom]

Every so often I go into someone else's blog to peruse and I receive a critical hit of psychic damage so strong I'm left reeling for a solid hour. Like, you really just Say Shit with your whole ass chest, huh. And proud of it! Insane.

At the very least, this is a testament to how carefully curated my online experience is.

#yes this is about anti*shyppers lmao #stumbled into a blog who thought threatening to hit people with cars #is the same as pixels being mean to one another #just wanted to vent a bit lol #but it's genuinely unhinged how these people don't understand the difference #between a REAL and CREDIBLE threat #and uh fiction #fundie christian ass pearl clutching #wild to see people in the queer community act like soccer moms during the satanic panic #the cognitive dissonance

[creature-wizard]

LOL, you shitheads again? You must really love getting your asses kicked if you're coming to me, of all people.

For anybody unaware, the Satanists behind the website mentioned in this ask are a bunch of openly antisemitic conspiracy theorists appropriating Eastern traditions, and they've been trying to advertise themselves and increase their SEO by sending asks like these. Each ask is tailored to appeal to whatever they think your beliefs might be, but they all follow a similar template that goes something like:

What do you think of [URL redacted]? They claim to follow [insert gods here], they [something about supporting abortion], and they're the largest [insert group here] group in the world."

The spirituality promoted on this website is rooted in deeply antisemitic conspiracy theories and pseudohistory. If I addressed every single claim they made, I'd be here all day, so I'm going to stick to a few examples:

They claim that Satanism isn't a reaction to Christianity, but is in fact older than Christianity. This is straight-up pseudohistorical bullshit.

They claim that Jews have perpetrated a grand conspiracy to conceal true spiritual knowledge from the masses. They outright cite The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a Czarist hoax created to justify violence against Russian Jews in the late 19th century. They claim that Christianity is a Jewish tool of world domination and mind control.

They claim that "Jewish ritual murder" is a thing. This is blood libel, an old conspiracy theory used to demonize Jews.

They claim that Jesus was a fictional creation made out of tropes "stolen" from various pagan gods. There is no actual evidence for this; it's another conspiracy theory. For a scholarly look at what most probably happened, I recommend How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee by Bart D. Erhman. Or if you can't get your hands on the books, just look into Dr. Ehrman's videos/lectures on the topic on YouTube.

They push the extremely racist ancient aliens bullshit, claiming that the pagan gods were actually aliens.

They claim that the serpent actually represents human DNA, life force, and kundalini. This is a conspiracy theory that disregards the diversity of lore about serpents in various belief systems and traditions around the world, and culturally appropriates from Eastern traditions.

Their idea of what constitutes genuine Satanic practices is basically New Agers' bastardized versions of Eastern concepts and practices.

They claim that the "Tree of Life" is actually a stolen pagan symbol that maps the human soul. Again, an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that disregards the actual significance of trees within the various traditions that involve them.

They claim that the Pentateuch was ripped off from the five suits of the tarot, and that tarot has ancient origins with alchemical significance. Tarot was actually invented in the 15th century for playing games. Mystical symbolism was applied by occultists in the 18th century.

The creators of the site apparently believe that the Simon Necronomicon is a genuine translation of older documents. It's not. The Necronomicon was a literary device created by HP Lovecraft; every text purporting to be a translation of the Necronomicon is a modern creation.

If you get an anon message like this in your inbox, do not post it. These people want you to share their URL to get more publicity and spread their antisemitic conspirituality. Don't give them what they want.

#answered #antisemitism #conspirituality #satanism #satanists #conspiracy theories #conspiracy theory #conspiracism #witchblr #paganblr #occultblr #racism

[wrishwrosh]

hey, i find your posts about historical fiction pretty interesting, do you have any recs?

anon this is the most beautiful and validating ask i have ever received. absolutely of COURSE I have recs. not gonna be a lot of deep cuts on this list but i love all of these books and occasionally books do receive awards and acclaim because they are good. in no particular order:

the cromwell trilogy by hilary mantel. of course i gotta start with the og. it’s 40 million pages on the tudor court and the english reformation and it will fundamentally change you as a person and a reader

(sub rec: the giant, o’brien by hilary mantel. in many ways a much shorter thematic companion to the cromwell trilogy imo. about stories and death and embodiment and the historical record and 18th century ireland. if you loved the trilogy, read this to experience hils playing with her own theories about historical fiction. if you are intimidated by the trilogy, read this first to get a taste of her prose style and her approach to the genre. either way please read all four novels ok thanks)

lincoln in the bardo by george saunders. the book that got me back into historical fiction as an adult. american history as narrated by a bunch of weird ghosts and abraham lincoln. chaotic and lovely and morbid.

the everlasting by katy simpson smith. rome through the ages as seen by a medici princess, a gay death-obsessed monk, and an early christian martyr. really historically grounded writing about religion and power, and also narrated with interjections from god’s ex boyfriend satan. smith is a trained historian and her prose slaps

(sub rec: free men by katy simpson smith. only a sub rec bc i read it a long time ago and my memory of it is imperfect but i loved it in 2017ish. about three men in the woods in the post revolutionary american south and by virtue of being about masculinity is actually about women. smith did her phd in antebellum southern femininity and motherhood iirc so this book is LOCKED IN to those perspectives)

a mercy by toni morrison. explores the dissolution of a household in 17th century new york. very different place and time than a lot of morrison’s bigger novels but just as mean and beautiful

(sub rec: beloved by toni morrison. a sub rec bc im pretty sure everyone has already read beloved but perhaps consider reading it again? histfic ghost story abt how the past is always here and will never go away and loves you and hates you and is trying to kill you)

an artist of the floating world by kazuo ishiguro. my bestie sir kazuo likes to explore the past through characters who, for one reason or another (amnesia, dementia, being a little baby robot who was just born yesterday, etc), are unable to fully comprehend their surroundings. this one is about post-wwii japan as understood by an elderly supporter of the imperial regime

(sub rec: remains of the day by kazuo ishiguro. same conceit as above except this time the elderly collaborator is incapable of reckoning with the slow collapse of the system that sheltered him due to britishness.)

the pull of the stars by emma donoghue. donoghue is a strong researcher and all of her novels are super grounded in their place and time without getting so caught up in it they turn into textbooks. i picked this one bc it is a wwi lesbian love story about childbirth that made me cry so hard i almost threw up on a plane but i recommend all her histfic published after 2010. before that she was still finding her stride.

days without end by sebastian barry. this one is hard to read and to rec bc it is about the us army’s policy of genocide against native americans in the 19th century west as told by an irish cavalry soldier. it is grim and violent and miserable and also so beautiful it makes me cry about every three pages. first time i read it i was genuinely inconsolable for two days afterwards.

this post is long as hell so HONORABLE MENTIONS: the amazing adventures of kavalier & clay by michael chabon, the western wind by samantha harvey, golden hill by frances spufford, barkskins by annie proulx, postcards by annie proulx, most things annie proulx has written but i feel like i talk about her too much, the view from castle rock by alice munro, the name of the rose by umberto eco, tracks by louise erdrich

#honestly will probably be coming back with additions bc this is just based on whats currently on my bookshelf #made this post while staring at the copy of mirror & the light i keep on my desk as some kind of hilary mantalisman #send me your address so i can explain my passions etc etc #histfic

[veetyuh]

I'm reminded of that "antishipping isn't purity culture because it isn't conservative christianity" post... And I think I've done some unpacking on why it triggers me so much.

I was an intersex child shoved into the role of a female, in a rural & conservative Christian environment. I've had not just purity culture shoved down my throat, but also the shame of not being able to meet the expectations put on women in that environment.

It's not just cover up, slut. That implies I had something to show off, to begin with. And men still want to ogle you and imagine what your body is like beneath that modest dress. So here, literal child. Have this shapewear to make your figure conform to that of a developing middle school female's under your clothes.

It's contradictory that way. You have to try to be unappealing to not 'tempt' men, but you still need to be appealing in the sense of conventional female attractiveness. Moreover, you must not think about men or sex at all. But you cannot be asexual — your parents demand grandchildren.

Antis do the same with their queer representation. It's the same contradictory expectations... They champion the idea of breaking societal norms through queerness (i.e. the idea of 'queer as in fuck you'), then demand that every nuclear family norm be met. Queer characters must be disruptive without actually disrupting anything. And the contradictions apply to fans, too — you're homophobic if you don't like a canon queer ship, and you're fetishistic if you like queer ships too much. (There are more, but I'd be stuck here forever if I listed them all. 😅)

There's also the obvious — fictional sins being as bad as things done in real life. There's Matthew 5, which includes so many popular verses about thought control that Christians use, and equates bad thought to bad doing.

27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.

And fuck if antis aren't cutting off their entire goddamn arm and gouging out both eyes.

It's not just purity culture they embody, though — it's the satanic panic, too. Good lord the amount of times my grandma wouldn't let me watch Ghost Hunters because she thought I was welcoming demons into the home, or her concern for me watching horror movies because I'd surely become more violent. It's the same shit, different horse.

On a more light-hearted note, they play the same game that Christian demoninations do, too. I was Baptist, and considered the Methodists okay. But the Catholics? No, keep that shit away from me. Why are you worshipping Mary? That's idolatry! How horrible, to openly spit in God's face. When I read antis' DNI lists rattling off forbidden, unredeemable fandoms, it feels the same way, haha.

But what really seals the deal for me is how they smile in your face and promise they're just looking out for you. Christians do that, too. "We want you to get better. We want to help you. You're on a dark path." While they break your bones to force you into their mold. You may not be hurting anyone on your dark path, but they'll convince you that you ARE. You're hurting yourself "spiritually," you're hurting the community, your family, by being an abomination to God. You're hurting everyone and yourself, you just need us to help you realize it. Antis feel the exact same. I block them pre-emptively because I cannot handle having that shit directed at me again.

Moreover, their insults feel the same. The childish "icky," the ad hominems. It's too reminiscent for me. Of my mom hating my icky facial hair and my classmates making fun of my masc traits when they thought I couldn't hear; you are a gross person!!1! Ew!!!

It's funny that antis are so often anti-kink, considering they're so fucking intent on giving me a golden shower and telling me it's rain. I hope they're careful not to choke on the homophobic, pedophilic pastor cock they're sucking.

#proship #excuse my rambling

[mariacallous]

Salman Rushdie has just published Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder. In August 2022, he was giving a talk at the Chautauqua Institution in New York. Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old from New Jersey, rushed the stage and stabbed him 15 times. It was astonishing that Salman survived. He lost the sight in one eye and sustained terrible injuries, but he’s still with us and he’s still writing, and unlike Hadi Matar, he’s still worth hearing.

We think of fanatics as stalkers with an obsessive knowledge of their targets.  Like the antisemites who compile lists of Jews in the media or the homophobes who so focus on the details of gay sex they might almost be closet cases

Most terrorists and bigots are not like that. They are like soldiers in an army who kill and hate for no other reason than tradition or men in authority have told them to kill and hate. If we were less fascinated by the pseudo-glamour of violence, we would see them for what they are: dullards and jerks.

In Knife Salman is almost as angered by the sheer lazy stupidity of his wannabee assassin as his violence.

“I do not want to use his name in this account. My Assailant, my would-be Assassin, the Asinine man who made Assumptions about me, and with whom I had a near-lethal Assignation … I have found myself thinking of him, perhaps forgivably, as an Ass.”

The ass “didn’t bother to inform himself about the man he decided to kill. By his own admission he read barely two pages of my writing and watched a couple of YouTube videos”.

That was enough, apparently, along with a little light indoctrination in the Levant.

We know from Matar’s mother that her son changed from a popular young man to a moody religious zealot after visiting her ex-husband in the Hezbollah-controlled town of Yaroun in Lebanon, a mile or so from the Israeli border.

“I was expecting him to come back motivated, to complete school, to get his degree and a job. But instead, he locked himself in the basement. He had changed a lot. He didn't say anything to me or his sisters for months.”

Salman quotes a wonderfully perceptive line from Jodi Picoult

“If you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It’s because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.”

Rushdie is openly contemptuous, as he has every right to be.

“I see you now at twenty-four,” he writes, “already disappointed by life, disappointed in your mother, your sisters, your father, your lack of boxing talent, your lack of any talent at all; disappointed in the bleak future you saw stretching ahead of you, for which you refused to blame yourself.”

This has always been the way. Readers old enough to remember 1989 when the Ayatollah Khomeini ordered Salman’s execution for writing a blasphemous satire of Islam’s origin story in the Satanic Verses,will know that Khomeini had not read it. Nor had the furious demonstrators in the streets or the regressive leftists and Tory ministers who upbraided him for the non-crime of causing offence.

Those of us who had read the book pointed out that it was a magical realist fiction which contained sympathetic accounts of the racism Muslim immigrants in the UK suffered. Indeed, the Tories of the day loathed Salman, we continued, because of his confrontations with official racism.

But after a while we fell silent. Pleading with his enemies felt demeaning. It gave them undeserved credit, as if they were reasonable people, who could be swayed by evidence rather than just, well, pillocks.

In Knife Salman attempts an imaginary conversation with his persecutor.

OK, he says, Islam, unlike Judaism and Christianity, holds that man is not made in God’s image. God has no human qualities, it says.

But isn’t language a human quality? To have language, God would have to have a mouth, a tongue, vocal cords and a voice, just like a man. The terrorist’s understanding is that God cannot be like a man, however. So, God could not have spoken to Gabriel in Arabic. Gabriel must have translated his message when he came to the prophet.

The angel made it comprehensible to Muhammed by delivering it in human speech which is not the speech of God.

Thus, the version of Islamic instruction Matar received in his basement when he switched from playing video games to listening to Imams was an interpretation of a translation.

“I’m trying to suggest to you that, even according to your own tradition, there is uncertainty. Some of your own early philosophers have suggested this. They say everything can be interpreted, even the Book. It can be interpreted according to the times in which the interpreter lives. Literalism is a mistake.”

For a while, Rushdie says he wants to meet Matar again at the trial, as if he wants to have the argument in the flesh.

He tells a story about Samuel Beckett, which could only have happened to Samuel Beckett.

Beckett was walking through Paris in 1938 when he was confronted by a pimp named Prudent, who wanted money from him. Beckett pushed Prudent away, whereupon the pimp pulled out a knife and stabbed him in the chest, narrowly missing the left lung and the heart.

Beckett was taken to the nearest hospital, bleeding heavily. He only just survived.

You will never guess who paid for his treatment. James Joyce, of course, he did.

Anyway, Beckett went to the pimp’s trial. He met Prudent in the courtroom, and asked him why he had done it. This was the pimp’s reply: “Je ne sais pas, monsieur. Je m’excuse.” (I don’t know, sir. I’m sorry.)

But the more he thought about it, the less Rushdie had to say to his enemy. The idea that you can have theological arguments with a man who wants to kill you for writing a book he hasn’t even read felt ridiculous.

Although popular culture is full of stories about murderers, and true crime podcasts top the charts, killers and fanatics are nearly always less interesting than their victims. More often than not they are just thick. Nasty and vicious, but thick first of all.

We are about to see the stupidity of fanatics deployed on a mass scale. Two thirds of Republican voters (and nearly 3 in 10 Americans) continue to believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, and that Joe Biden was not lawfully elected. They think it because that is what Trump told them to think.

Islamists told Matar that Salman was an apostate, and that was all he needed to know. Trump told Republicans the election was stolen and ditto.

If Republicans were consistent people, they would not vote for Trump in 2024. What would be the point? They would have every reason to fear that the deep state would rig the 2024 presidential election as it rigged the 2020 presidential election.

But they will vote for him because, once again, that is what he tells them to do.

In the end there is a limit to how much attention you can pay the vicious and the stupid.

They are not interesting enough, as Rushdie concluded with marvellous disdain as he contemplated the life sentence Matar will face.

"Here we stand: the man who failed to kill an unarmed seventy-five-year-old writer, and the now 76-year-old writer. Somewhat to my surprise, I find I have very little to say to you. Our lives touched each other for an instant and then separated. Mine has improved since that day, while yours has deteriorated. You made a bad gamble and lost. I was the one with the luck… Perhaps, in the incarcerated decades that stretch out before you, you will learn introspection, and come to understand that you did something wrong. But you know what? I don’t care. This, I think, is what I have come to this courtroom to say to you. I don’t care about you, or the ideology that you claim to represent, and which you represent so poorly. I have my life, and my work, and there are people who love me. I care about those things.”

[ellzilla]

I like the silly Pokemon Parody Ark Ripoff game so here's my two cents if you're interested. Under the cut bc this post is long as fuck lol Also congrats Palworld for the 1.5 Milly player peak on steam, go you crazy ass indie game

After trying to find cute Palworld content on tumblr and seeing nothing but whining, it's surprising how many people hate this random ass indie game that was made on a budget of 10k? Like yeah the designs can be boring parodies with a handful of great original ones but the amount of people who are outright hateful's kinda.. odd? Like lads you can critique a game, it's designs and CEO without sending death threats to the developers right? Tumblr likes to steal from the rich so why is it bad when someone actually does? Anyway it's insane how there's people trying to prove the game stole assets from Nintendo and then compare models which. Are not the same poly and vertices wise? And even if it was, it's hard to take seriously when the poster is someone who admits they hate the game for... Animal abuse? Also insane how many people hate Palworld for the fact it has -human- slavery, Pals can do jobs for you 'so it's cruel' and has a certain Pal number 69 who's description is suggestive so the game's immoral and over all "trying too hard to be edgy" it's like. Since when do we police such topics in games of all things? Have you played games that aren't Baby's First Christian Game before? Scratch that because even shitty bad Christian games have harsher shit than what's in Palworld. Catching and selling ppl [who tried to kill you in the first place] in the game's exactly like catching 'mons and it's nowhere near as fucked up as Rimworld where you have to go out of your way to make prisons for people and, if you wanna be extra evil, you can extract their organs and sell them on the market n' nobody tried to cancel that game. In-game, Palworld discourages you from overworking your lil guys and asks you to make spas and beds and keep them well fed and to make sure they're medically sound and happy! Oh no! How cruel! I am asking my little teapot elephant to water my garden!!! Pokemon's also confirmed that people used to marry Pokemon in-lore and we have games like bg3 and DOS2 where. Um. Halsin is a bear in more ways than one yknow what I'm saying? also spider. Both pretty nasty and def not my cuppa but having a fit over a description in a game's kinda weird? Also for a game promoted on "Pokemon with guns" it is INCREDIBLY tame. Slavery is p-much "oh lol I can catch this guy. Anyway back to petting my fire fox :)" and put him in a box like any other creature bc who cares, videogame + the guy literally tried to Kill You. There's also no blood or gore or anything actually shocking tbh? Yeah there's guns but they're late game and you can literally chose not to deal with guns

Since when did we decide to yell at a game like the satanic panic of the original pokemon where ppl said it promoted cockfighting? Although it is fictional cockfighting gamewise, nobody cares because it's way more than that lol Also why does nobody complain that the game is literally ARK btw? Is it because ARK players don't give a shit or is it because some people will view a game and crit it for purely surface level assumptions with no nuance or understanding? Criticize it for lifting game elements from more than just pokemon, criticize it's CEO for being a regular ol' shitty CEO, criticize it's terrible official servers and buggy 'mon AI, but by all means do NOT spread false information and slander-ish claims against it jfc

#lizard fucking RANTs bro #palworld

[tyrantisterror]

My Personal History with My Good Friend, Satan

My first encounter with The Devil - that I can remember, at least - came when I was about three or so. My mom liked to borrow VHS tapes from libraries to show me and my siblings a lot, and one of the libraries she used was the one at our church. It was a small and obviously very religion-centric collection, but it left a notable mark on me - like, that's where I saw this weird, kinda shitty cartoon version of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe which might be responsible for irreconcilably fucking up my taste in women? I just have this distinct memory of watching the scene where Edmund is tempted by the White Witch and thinking, "Yeah, he's making the right call." If anything I was frustrated that he hesitated - three year old me was already simping for this woman. Just imagine a child channeling Ernie Hudson in Ghostbusters and growling, "When a terrifying and beautiful woman offers you candy and a private sleigh ride, you say YES!" and that's basically me as a kid.

Where was I? Right, Satan. So, the other video from that library I remember was this cartoon retelling of Bible stories, and really I just remember the Adam and Eve part. The temptation scene had this huge, super gnarly-looking demonic red snake in it, and he was so cool and badass and I was already predisposed to like snakes anyway, so of course he was my instant favorite. But, like almost all media featuring reptiles that captured my little child heart, he turned out to be the bad guy - literally The Devil, in this case - and was punished at the end of the story. And that pissed me off.

Sometime shortly thereafter - or at least that's how I remember it, this was over thirty years ago so things might be smushed closer together than they really were by the fog of ages - some of the kids in my preschool chastised me for liking snakes. "Don't you know the devil is a snake? Snakes are evil!" I remembered the movie, and it made me angry.

Because snakes aren't evil, and as a kid I knew that because my parents taught me it. Snakes were just animals, they don't know right from wrong, and to call them evil it to judge them for what they are, not what they do. That experience taught me a very important lesson: The Devil is a tool to make people hate the innocent. And as I'd later learn, snakes were far from the only innocents people would vilify because of a demonic association.

The second time I met the devil came a few years later, when I was six or seven or so. My Grampa and Grams liked to take us up North to Mackinac City and the Upper Peninsula each summer, and I have a lot of fond memories of those trips, but there was one in particular that's relevant to this discussion. We saw a sign for a "laser light show" in the shopping district, and I got to stay up late to see it with my family. The show in question was basically a cartoon projected into the night sky adapting the song The Devil Went Down to Georgia. It was super primitive and hokey and cornball and terrible and I loved every second of it. I was enchanted, absolutely delighted with the spectacle and the silly song where the devil was less a force of evil and more a comically bumbling inept supervillain - one of my favorite archetypes, even back then. So that's the second lesson about the devil I learned: The Devil can be fun sometimes.

Now, Godzilla, one of the few reptile characters I encountered as a kid who didn't end up a villain (at least not in the first movie of his I saw, Godzilla vs. Megalon), had already set me on the path to loving monsters of all stripes and, by extension, horror fiction in general, so as I grew up I had many more encounters with the devil. But while I warmed up quickly to most monster archetypes, like vampires, zombies, werewolves, etc., I always felt dismissive of demons. It kind of coincided with me becoming disillusioned with Christianity as a whole, in fact. A story about fighting evil, Christian-style demons is ultimately an allegory for fighting evil as defined by Christianity, and Christianity's definition of what evil is, well, sucks. It's bad! They got some things right, but some things horribly wrong. The devil is the tool Christianity uses to make you hate the innocent, and I struggled to enjoy a lot of demon stories because of that. Still do with some, in fact.

There were exceptions, of course - I loved The Evil Dead series as soon as I saw it at too-early-of-an-age, but then, the demons in it aren't super Christian. They aren't repelled by holy water or crucifixes or prayer, and in fact God and Jesus barely get mentioned in the series and never come up as a potential solution. They're kind of secular as demons go, and maybe that made them easier to stomach. But overall, demons ranked pretty low in the hierarchy of monsters to me - they were too tainted by the religion that spawned them for me to enjoy.

Until college, anyway. I quietly renounced my faith during my Freshmen year, and then, as if seeking one last chance at redemption in my eyes, the devil came to me again the following year. That's when I had a class on Medieval literature, and was exposed to far older devil stories than I had ever seen before. And Medieval devils kick ass. They have so much more personality and variety than I had come to expect, and some are downright affable, even sympathetic to a degree. It was one of many moments in college when I realized there was much more to a topic I'd previously written off as boring and trite.

This is when I read Dante's The Divine Comedy and Milton's Paradise Lost and Marlowe's Faust and Ben Johnson's The Devil Is An Ass. It's when I read early Gothic Horror novels like Matthew Gregory Lewis's The Monk, and dived into The Twilight Zone, which has more than a few episodes that are updates of medieval-style devil folktales in a more modern (i.e. 1960's) setting. And so many of these works presented the Devil not as a stand-in for everything Christianity hates, but as a person - a deeply flawed person, yes, but a person with actual wants and feelings and thoughts of his own, a person who was interesting and compelling - and sometimes funny, and sometimes charming, and sometimes really sad. There was, dare I say... sympathy for the devil growing in my heart.

In the last year of my undergraduate studies, I attended my college's yearly Medieval Studies Congress, where people from all over the world came to Kalamazoo just to share their research papers on medieval history and literature. One girl's thesis paper was on the subject of "rueful devils," i.e. depictions of demons in literature where they wanted to repent their sins and redeem themselves, which uniformly ended with the devils' hopes being dashed as they could not fully repent. This idea... possessed me. The idea that the devil could repent, or at least try to - that there could be hope even in the most debauched sinner. It was such a good narrative trope in my eyes - why did it die out centuries ago?

Well, because the church didn't like it, you see. If the devil can repent - if the Absolute King of Evil can choose to become a good person - then he's not very useful as a tool to make people hate the innocent anymore. The devil MUST be "pure evil" to work as intended. A rueful devil, a repentant devil, a devil that can be redeemed, forces us to be more forgiving and kind. It forces us to be better. It prevents us from hating people because an old book says so. And some people just couldn't have that, and so the trope died.

...

After I got my bachelor's degree, I entered the job market and, after applying to fifty different places or so, was finally hired as a high school english teacher about two weeks before the school year started. Said school year was the worst year of my life. Like, I've had extreme self loathing issues and suicidal ideation since, like, sixth grade, but holy shit it was NEVER as bad as it was in that nine month stretch between 2012 and 2013. There was this bridge I had to cross on the way to work each morning, and about two months in the job was so stressful that part of my morning routine was thinking, "You know, if I just swerve to the right, this can all be over and I'll never have to worry again." About halfway in I began drastically losing weight despite not changing my diet or getting more exercise and it was so traumatic that to this day whenever my weight starts to drop my initial reaction is dread rather than excitement. I impulse bought the first two Kung-Fu Panda movies and, after watching each for the first time and crying hideously, proceeded to watch them on repeat for an entire weekend while sobbing myself hoarse for reasons I couldn't comprehend at the time.

I was in Hell. And the devil met me there.

I started writing a story during that year. I didn't get very far, just a couple chapters, but it was one of the few things that gave me a sense of accomplishment. Despite all the stress and sadness and misery, I made something. It was a story about demons, and Hell, and trying to make your life better even when the world around you seems deadset on making you suffer as much as possible.

When my bosses called me into their office at the end of that year and told me that I had to quit my job so the assistant principal could take my teaching position and survive the downsizing they'd get next year, and that if I didn't quit they'd give me the lowest teacher evaluation they could and make it supremely difficult for me to get hired elsewhere... I was relieved. I'd been let out of Hell. After a handful of months left to finish out the year, I was free.

And then I went home, with nothing. No job, no desire to pursue the career for which I'd spent five years and an ungodly amount of money getting a degree to pursue, no nest egg, nothing. Nothing except a few chapters of a book.

The years that followed were hard. I did a lot of temp work, it took me a very long time to find something that worked for me. I may have left the worst year of my life, but there was still a lot of misery waiting for me. And through it all, I felt the need to accomplish... something, ANYTHING. I had to make something to prove I had a reason to exist, even if it was something that only had value to me.

With three years of work, those chapters became my first novel, No Sympathies: A Tale of Those Who Trespass Against Us. It was about the devil, and Hell, and finding salvation even when things seem inescapably bleak. It was my first novel, and now, eight years later, it's the first of five.

The devil saved my life. He saw me at my lowest, lifted me up, whispered, "It'll be ok. You have to keep going. I'll be with you, but you have to keep going," and goddammit, he kept me from swerving right.

That's when I learned the greatest truth about the devil, at least to me. The devil is a tool to make people hate the innocent, yes, this is true, but because of that, the devil can be a savior for the broken, the beaten, and the damned. You can feel like you're worthless, wretched, and doomed. But if the devil can rise from Hell, if the devil can choose to change, if people are willing to pray for the one sinner who needs it most - then there's hope for you too, isn't there?

Demons are creatures of rebellion - against God, against nature, against the powers that be, against doom and damnation itself. They were made to be a tool to hurt the innocent, but that's not what they have to be. Devils can lift us up, because no matter how far you fall, no one can say whether it's the end for you except you.

...I would like to point out that I am being figurative here. The devil does not literally exist, at least not in my view of things. He's a fictional character, nothing more. But he's a prolific fictional character, and how we portray him can say so much about us. And, to me, he is a dear friend, despite being imaginary, because the devil was there for me when I was low, and it was on his wings that I rose from doom.

...again, figuratively, not literally.

[rhaenin-time]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Storm of Swords, Chapter 25, Davos III

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

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

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

This is the part where I so often get crucified!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#oh my god this rant took so many turns #but how poetic would it be to get 'crucified' over this take #this was just supposed to be me slowly working towards my long essay about why people love to call targaryens “nazis” #but god i could fill a book with how fandom is an incubator for bad real-world politics #and then i was like - fuck - i got cancelled on twitter so often for any take like this and it's actually aggravating #asoiaf fandom #asoiaf #hotd #fire and blood #house targaryen #daenerys targeryan #hotd critical #because you KNOW some of those writers have been indulging in this interpretation #don't get me started on the 'eastern decadence' themes that also pop up around the targaryens #and how it relates to their 'eastern aesthetic' that would take all day

[virgobingo]

actually the subject of megumi's soul possibly being saved by higuruma's blade (from what is essentially a demon) is pretty blatantly inspired by christianity. looking at the imagery alone, it's like an attempted exorcism

i want to say gege started taking this theme seriously with angel

it seems like he's continuing it after all. i wonder how far it'll be taken

sukuna as a stand in for Satan?

here is where i get to ramble about things i just think would be cool:

idk if this is even possible but gojo coming back as a vengeful spirit resembling an angel would be kind of fascinating considering this

and kenjaku as a stand in for lilith (who is known as the mother of all demons) would be crazy (gege would be mixing abrahamic religions here but she's often included in works of fiction with christian symbolism anyways)

i just feel like it would be the perfect way for gege to start taking the eva ending route if he wants to. he's already made too many references to evangelion to count. he would be the type to have an apocalyptic ending. and it's starting to feel like things are so far gone, that he really might take this route.

anyways the really unpredictable player here is kenjaku bc who knows what they've set in motion. i keep thinking about how they told sukuna "keep your promise" before fighting gojo.. so who knows

#crazy theory time #jjk spoilers #kenjaku #gojo satoru #sukuna #jjk meta

[olderthannetfic]

To the NLOG anon:

I had written a long piece but lost it, so the gist of it is that bullies are social chameleons. They will always try to find a way to get away with bullying while claiming to be the victims. And many of the "bad" NLOGs were girls looking for ways to recreate the status quo with them at the top instead.

I think that NLOGs were a natural result of the post 9/11 conservative paranoia of "anyone who is not a good American™ is a Satanic Menace to Society" (where good American meant white, christian, affluent, thin, conventionally attractive, straight...and everybody else, from foreigners, fat people, anyone gender non conforming or even alternative people were "planning the downfall of civilization"). In that climate, harassment towards "the weird" was not only tolerated but encouraged as the moral thing to do.

And the thing is, if you are ostracized from society but discouraged to learn about feminism and such, then it's no wonder that your only way of defending yourself is by using the same attacks used against you!

The big change here I think came with the recession where suddenly society became fascinated with the weird, and being a hipster or a nerdy girl was "acceptable" (hence the "golden years" of Tumblr). Many of the bullies who had gained notoriety thanks to their privilege suddenly realised they couldn't get away with it as talk about discrimination and feminism was becoming more commonplace, and so many people adopted NLOG looks and attitudes to keep doing society approved bullying.

Nowadays tho you don't see many NLOGs because, like you said, we either know better now and have deconstructed ourselves or simply because in this era of "bring back bullying" most people don't need to hide behind underprivileged people to harass someone. If they want to hate on other women they can just become a tradwife/high value woman and go back to the conservative politics of the 2000s or they can pick a bit of #girlbossfeminism while going back to their hyper feminine roots to claim *throws dice* that you have to like pink or you have internalised misogyny and that you should just try to fit into the mold, for your own good, you know.

So yeah, those who want to oppress will find a way to do so under any costume, while being the loudest and sidelining the rest of us. There's nothing to do about it, unfortunately :(

--

I mean... sure...

But the actual phrase "not like the other girls" rose to prominence to point out how fucking obnoxious a class of book is for its heroine who is always like "I don't want to stay home and do needlework!" and then the book is set in some era when rich ladies are supposed to be running an entire manor house or something, not just embroider, and the author has blatantly missed all of that. Or it's some Anita Blake bullshit where the heroine hates literally every other woman, and especially all of them with blond hair because the author is insecure and bugfuck nuts.

It's a specific dumb trope in fiction and term in criticism of that dumb trope.

[czortofbaldmountain]

100 Journal Prompts for Luciferians and Theistic Satanists

Who is Lucifer/Satan to you personally and what is his role in your life?

How did you become a Luciferian/Satanist and why do you remain one?

If you were raised in a different religion, what is your relationship to it?

Do you practice magic? If yes, how does it relate to your religion?

Do you work with or venerate demons other than Lucifer/Satan or other beings associated with him? If not, would you like to? Which ones?

Do you consider to be worshipping Lucifer/Satan? How do you personally feel about worship in general?

How do you feel about Christian God?

How do you feel about angels? How about Michael specifically?

Do you work with or venerate any Christian spirits?

Write a Luciferian/Satanist poem.

What aspects of Lucifer/Satan are currently the most significant in your practice?

What symbols are significant to you as a Luciferian/Satanist?

Write a Luciferian/Satanist prayer.

Is there anything you would like to change about your practice? How can you do that?

If you were not always a Luciferian/Satanist, how did you change since you became one?

What is your favorite text relating to your religion and why?

What are your favorite and least favorite fictional depictions of Lucifer/Satan and why?

What has Luciferianism/Satanism helped you with?

What Luciferian/Satanist stories are important to you and why? (ex. stories of the Garden of Eden or the Rebellion of Angels)

Do you listen to music with Luciferian/Satanist themes? Do you feel your religion has any impact on what you like to listen to?

Write a thank you note to Lucifer/Satan.

What do you find to be hard about being a Luciferian/Satanist?

What about being a Luciferian/Satanist brings you joy?

Do you feel alienated sometimes as a Luciferian/Satanist? Do you have or would like to have some kind of community? If you don't but would like to, how can you find it?

Describe your ideal altar or sacred space.

What songs, if you have any, remind you of Lucifer/Satan?

Is fun a part of your religious practice and why yes or no? If yes, in what ways? If not, would you like to incorporate it? How?

Do you have any Luciferian/Satanist UPGs? What are they?

What are some interesting things about your local devil lore? Research if you don't know.

If you have any, what are your favorite songs you associate with Lucifer/Satan or your religion in general?

What are your favorite depictions of Lucifer/Satan in visual arts and why? What makes them speak to you?

Your thoughts on Romantic and Socialist Satanism (if you don't know what they are, research - they are important to the development of Satanism and Luciferianism as religions).

Your thoughts on the Bible.

Your thoughts on Paradise Lost.

Choose a myth involving Lucifer/Satan and reflect on it.

What has Lucifer/Satan done for you and what can you do for him?

Do you meditate as part of your religious practice? Which forms of meditation work best for you, and which do not? Why?

Do you celebrate any festivals or special days as part of your religious practice?

Have you ever done an official dedication? If yes, what did you do and how did it affect you? If not, would you like to?

If you were baptized, have you ever revoked your baptism? If yes, how did you do that and what did it change? If not, would you like to or not? Why?

If you make offerings, what do you like to give Lucifer/Satan (it doesn't have to be physical)? What do you think he likes to receive?

If you use pre-written prayers, what is your favorite one and why?

Rewrite a Christian prayer. Try to not make it a simple name switch, but something actually fitting the context of your religion.

How do you see Lucifer/Satan? It doesn't have to be based on visions, you can just describe how you imagine him to look when you think of him. You don't have to limit yourself to visualizing either, especially if you struggle with it! What scents do you associate with him, for example?

How did your practice change since you have started?

Do you consider Lucifer/Satan to be a deity?

Did you use to be afraid of Lucifer/Satan? What were you afraid of and how did it change? Do you have some remaining fears?

Your thoughts on Hell.

Do you consider blasphemy or inversion a part of your religious practice? Why yes or no? If yes, what is its role?

How can you fight the far right presence and ideas in the Left Hand Path community?

How is your religion present in your daily life?

Do you like complex rituals, or do you prefer to keep things simple? Why?

What aspects of Lucifer/Satan do you feel are most present in your practice? Would you like to explore some other ones? Why or why not?

What do you think happens after we die? Is it important to you or not? Why?

What things about your practice are the most important to you and why?

How would you describe what your religion is about to someone who knows nothing about it?

Where do your ethics come from?

How do your ethics relate to your religion?

What do you appreciate about Lucifer/Satan?

Do you use any kind of divination as part of your religious practice? If yes, what methods work best for you?

How does cultural Christianity affect you as a Luciferian/Satanist? What things you do or beliefs you hold are culturally Christian? If you live in a Christian culture, it's likely more than you think even if you were not raised in the religion.

If you are interested in Lilith (or any closed figure), what are the qualities of her that speak to you? What open figures with those qualities could you explore in your practice instead? Research if you don't know.

What does it mean to you to be a Luciferian/Satanist?

Is sexuality a part of your religious practice? What is its role in it?

If you were planning a ritual or any religious activity for a group of people, what would it be and how would it look like?

What non-satanic philosophies and practices do you find inspiring?

What makes your religious practice personal and truly yours?

What would you like to change about Luciferianism/Satanism and why?

What ideas in LaVey's works do you think are connected to his fascist sympathies and how can you challenge their presence in the LHP community? Do you think you were influenced by them? How can you deconstruct them?

What plants and animals in your local environment are associated with Lucifer/Satan? Research!

What popular ideas in your religion do you disagree with and why?

What texts were influential for you as a Luciferian/Satanist and how?

How can you connect your religious practice to your culture?

Would you like to incorporate your hobbies or interests into your religious practice? How can you do that?

Research and describe a local folk demon or a folk demon from the culture of your ancestors. If you really can't find one, just describe any folk demon you find interesting.

Describe a Christian story you perceive differently as a Luciferian/Satanist. How and why is it different?

Your thoughts on the concept of sin.

Do you have some personal religious traditions? Describe them.

Do you perceive Lucifer and Satan as the same or different and why?

Does your religion bring you comfort? If yes, how?

Describe a folk story about Lucifer/Satan, preferably a local one.

How do you connect with your own divinity? When do you feel it the most?

Recognizing your inherent worth and divinity also means recognizing it within other beings. How does it affect your treatment of them and do you think something about it should change?

Do you have an interest in the dark and macabre, for example, vulture culture or certain kinds of music? What makes it speak to you? Do you think it intersects with your religion? If yes, how?

Choose an aspect of Lucifer/Satan and reflect on it.

Do you consider yourself a pagan? Why or why not?

Is taking care of yourself a part of your practice? How?

What makes you appreciate earthly life?

If you have ex-Christian trauma, has the religion you practice now helped you? How?

What values and virtues do you associate with Lucifer/Satan? How can you make them more present in your life?

Has your religion helped you with accepting yourself? If yes, how?

What makes you feel connected to Lucifer/Satan?

Are you Luciferian or Satanist? Why are you on this path and not the other? Is there something you appreciate about the other one and would like to incorporate into your own practice? If yes, how can you do that?

What things about Christianity do you think are harmful? What do you appreciate and is it something you would like to take inspiration from? If yes, how can you do that?

Write down some problematic things about your own religion. How can you counteract them?

What good things do you think your religion brings to the world? How can you make the world better as a Luciferian/Satanist?

What makes you proud of yourself?

What brings you pleasure? Do you ever feel guilty for enjoying harmless things? If yes, why and how can you help yourself release that guilt?

What interesting thing about your religion have you learned recently?

What are the subjects in the realm of your religion you would like to learn more about?

#czortposting #journal prompts #devotional journal #luciferian #theistic satanist #luciferianism #theistic satanism #theistic luciferian #theistic luciferianism #lucifer devotee #satanism #satanist #left hand path #occult #demon work #demonolatry #luciferian witch #satanic witch #daemonolatry #luciferian witchcraft

[ashintheairlikesnow]

thoughts about the devil in fiction

I think the amount of stories that feature or even focus on a deeply sympathetic or tragic Lucifer Morningstar who is not so much evil as misunderstood, or someone who broke the rules before anyone understood rules could be broken, are an interesting take on our innate need to believe that literally anyone can be redeemed, or at least have some capacity for desiring or wishing for redemption even if they can never, ever earn it.

The tragedy of Lucifer isn't that he was the first of the damned, but that he simply has no other future, no hint of potential to have existence be anything but what it already is.

His tragedy never results in any significant change to heaven in a positive direction. Usually these stories involve the idea of rebellion designed to take heaven down or make it more similar to hell. Rebellion based on being jealous of humanity's ability to make their own choices, or being so proud of himself that he believed his power could rival God.

Lucifer remains trapped within a prison of his own pride and belief that he knows best, or maybe the story involves him learning that his pride was misplaced, but even so the punishment is never truly lifted. It cannot be. It's eternal.

There's also an element, I think, of many people seeing the unfairly demonized - how impossible it can seem to fight against seemingly arbitrary rules - and sort of painting that in larger strokes using the Devil as a canvas. The first of creation to look at the way things were and wonder why they could not be different than this.

How many of us grow up thinking we will change things on a grand scale, fight against the powers that made us, and instead find ourselves simply struggling to maintain hope in a world we aren't allowed to affect? Who find ourselves stomped down when we stand up, or told our ideas are impossible? Told that we're just jealous of those who have more than we have, or that we're too full of ourselves thinking we could make a difference?

It's a really interesting relatability that we have created out of a handful of mentions in a very old book, similar mythologies from other religions, and sheer imagination.

Even in Dante's Hell, written in the 17th century, Lucifer is tragic, damned by pride and envy of God to reign in Hell but ultimately declaring he would rather rule the worst of creation than serve the best.

Is it the best, though?

What is humanity with all its potential for both bad and good removed?

Is the goodness of humanity worth much if it can't be contrasted with the worst? Does good exist without evil, or is it functionally meaningless at that point? Does Lucifer rule over the way that humanity can define what is good, rather than serve a good that has no evil with which to compare itself?

One of my favorite takes has always been those stories that have Lucifer's damnation be focused on seeing the worst of humanity coalesced, over and over and over again, and never allowed to see goodness in Creation. That his tragedy is that he isn't allowed to see how we can use the free will and knowledge of good and evil to do good, he can only see the way it's been twisted to darkness. Which suggests that he has been blinded to goodness purposefully.

The story of the serpent tempting Eve is always performed or written as the serpent slyly, knowingly tricking her by saying, "Surely you will not die," with a wink and a nudge. But there's another take in which the serpent - often written to be the same as Lucifer/Satan and explicitly stated to be the same entity in Christianity, although Genesis doesn't actually make that connection, it's just a snake who can talk and ask questions Eve and Adam hadn't thought of yet - was genuinely of the belief that humanity wouldn't come to same ruin he had, since they were so clearly and obviously being given a different set of potential than the angels.

In that reading, "Surely you will not die," is said with outright, honest confusion as to why they would think so.

After all, this creation was two people in a garden being given endless paradise. But there was something about the potential of their existence they had yet to touch... the ability to make choices that were truly their own.

His rage, his unending fury and pain, is because he believed once in his hubris that if humans can be given the capacity to choose, so could an angel. But then he realized that it didn't matter... even his rebellion was choreographed. It was just lines written on a page, enter the Morningstar, stage left, give his lines, be thrown into the pit.

If the plan was written from the start by a power he could never begin to equal, that means it was a script whose lines he read thinking those thoughts were his own.

Lucifer's tragedy is that even his pride and his envy, his fall, wasn't actually his.

His rage and his suffering is just one more step in a plan larger than he could ever be.

And he had no idea until it was done.

Punished for playing his part so well in a play he had no hand in writing and no idea was even an act, given the unending absence of the basic foundation of angelic existence afterward, forced to witness the worst of the favored creation given everything he ever wanted only to squander it...

Isn't that a tragedy unlike any other?

So those stories that feature Lucifer or even demons in general who are sympathetic and tragic because they are fighting against a constructed universe that they can barely touch or affect and who are suffering an absence, a chasm inside of them that was once filled with artificially created joy that was removed as arbitrarily as it was made...

You can see why those stories resonate over centuries, take new forms, and are an endless fascination for those of us here.

#lucifer morningstar #literary thoughts #the devil #satan #tragedy #tropes #characterization #demons #demons in fiction #satan in fiction #writing #reading #lucifer

[panlight]

What do you think of the "Everything in twilight is because of Mormomism" theory going around? I'm always in some random comment section that's discussing twilight(either the lore, the characters, or SMs writing) and that's the only thing anybody will ever bring up

I think she was definitely influenced by her religion and the culture she grew up in, but I don't think most of it was like, intentional.

In fact she seemed to intentionally try to avoid Mormonism in the story; Charlie is Lutheran, Bella doesn't really have any faith, Carlisle is/was 'Anglican' and Edward seems to be vaguely Christian. She chose not to make any of the characters canonically Mormon, but they sometimes feel Mormon to readers because of how she wrote them.

SM herself had this to say:

The main theme that I consider to be LDS is that of free agency. These books are all about choice to me–people’s ability to rise above (or sink below) what is expected of them. There is a little bit of Helaman’s stripling warriors with the pack, too (they fight to protect their families, who are not able to fight the way they can). There is some overt discussion of religion, particularly in New Moon, and a little in Eclipse. For me, that is more about realism rather than my specific religion. Religious or not, real people have to wonder sometime about where they came from, why they’re here, and where they’re going. Characters who didn’t ponder that a little would feel pretty shallow to me.   As an author, I consider NOTHING, ha ha ha. I just tell a story. All the symbolism and themes and archetypes are things I discover after the fact. All that stuff in the above paragraph–I didn’t think of any of those things until after the story was done. Then I would read through it and think, “Hey, the pack kind of reminds me of those Ammonite kids. Wonder if that’s where I got it from?”

So I don't think she set out to make Carlisle 'look like Joseph Smith' but can imagine that when she was trying to imagine a young leader she might have been influence by Smith. I can definitely see how her attitudes toward marriage, motherhood, Indigenous peoples and race could have been influenced by her faith and culture. Imprinting seems to be related to a common trope in early Mormom fiction (tl;dr - everyone exists as souls before we are born and sometimes pair up in that spirit realm and have to find each other on Earth and when they do it's this instant, powerful recognition), and this based on an essay by a fellow Mormon (tw: for religion talk). And the whole idea of eternal families relates to ideas about 'sealing' and the Mormon afterlife.

But I don't think she set out like, "bwahaha I'm going to write a MORMON vampire romance!!!" She's not that deep, she had a weird dream and wrote it down and then built on that going wherever her imagination took her, but that imagination was certainly influenced by her faith and lived experiences.

And plenty of conservative religious types hate the books on principle for having vampires and werewolves in them at all because that's occult and that's of Satan. Also because of the 'sexual content.'

#ask #tw: religion #tw: anti-native racism

[artist-issues]

Quick question. Have you read any of Brandon Sanderson's books before? If so, what books would you recommend?

Also, what books of C.S. Lewis, would you recommend and why.

I want to start reading them, but I'm uncertain what books I should pick out and try.

Hello my friend!

I've never read Brandon Sanderson, or heard of him! Do you hear good things about him? Should I look into him? Sorry to turn it back around on you.

C. S. Lewis is unlike any other author to me. What he has to say resonates with me and feels like he opened up my heart and put what was in there into order every time I read his stuff. Feels like going to the chiropractor—like my thoughts and emotions and vague ideas have been out of alignment, and he pops them back into place where I didn't even know I needed alignment.

That said, I love all his stuff. Fiction, non-fiction, essays, letters to friends, lectures, everything. So I'm almost...the wrong person to ask, because I would recommend ANYTHING he writes.

I'll try to give you a little recommendation-by-starting point?

If you're looking for fiction: Read the Chronicles of Narnia. If you've already read them, read them again 😅 I read them on loop. They're on my phone. I'm never not reading them.

If you're looking for deeper ("adult") fiction: Read Out of the Silent Planet, then Perelandra—but I don't recommend reading That Hideous Strength until you've tried to read...

3. If you're looking for commentary on fundamental worldviews: Read The Abolition of Man. It's an essay on what C.S. Lewis believed about the idea of "progressivism," but it has a lot to say about objectivity versus subjectivity, and where logic and emotion belong in the priority-list of a person...I just recommend that everybody read The Abolition of Man. Then read That Hideous Strength to finish the Ransom Trilogy, because it's kind of a modern-fairytale picture of what Lewis was trying to say in Abolition. Reading both will compliment his thoughts!

4. If you're still looking for more fiction: Read The Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce, then Til We Have Faces and The Pilgrim's Regress.

5. If you're looking to set your mind on the things above with C.S. Lewis: Read Mere Christianity, and The Problem of Pain.

6. If you're looking to hear what C.S. Lewis had to say about stories or critical thinking: Read his essay in response to critics of the Lord of the Rings (I think it's called "The Dethronement of Power") and read An Experiment in Criticism. (He has so much good stuff to say about enjoyment, and how humans can use their critical thinking skills to actually get in their own way. C.S. Lewis really believed that people should enjoy what is good to enjoy, in the proper way, and that that was one of the most God-honoring things you could do. He also hated teetotaling along the same lines 😅)

Remember that everything C.S. Lewis writes is very "thematic." He wasn't exactly making allegories all the time, but he was making "supposals" all the time. For example, Narnia is "suppose God created other worlds; in those worlds there had to have been a Jesus; in a world of talking beasts, what would Jesus look like? A lion." Or, "suppose God created life on all the planets in our solar system, not just Earth, and suppose Satan was put in charge of ours while other angels were put in charge of other planets; then what would space travel look like?" And many thematic lessons are tied up in there.

Also, if you read his biography Surprised by Joy and Perelandra, you might come to realize something about C.S. Lewis' beliefs that I'm only just starting to grasp: he thought we make WAY too drastic and exclusive a distinction between "story" and "reality." He believed that there was something in every story which points back to the one great story God made up, which is reality. So he's not afraid to include pagan mythology in his own Christian stories because to him, knowing their history and the cultures they come from, some of those pagan myths and stories tie neatly into truths about God. It might be a hard thing to grasp depending on your Biblical upbringing, but the spirit of what he means is not unbiblical.

Another cool thing I'm learning from Lewis is that he didn't think of all mankind as monsters. Oh, he believed that the Bible was correct when it says "all have sinned; there is none righteous," etc. He certainly didn't believe there was anything good left in man. But what he did believe was that man was kind of like a broken mirror, I guess. Like, it's in pieces on the floor. Good for nothing but the trash. But you can still look hard at the shards and figure out what it should be doing, and in that way, you can see traces of the mirror's creator. So in his biography, there's this interesting part where C.S. Lewis actually says that heartlessness is a worse sin than, say, homosexuality—they're both sin, but at least one points to a twisted version of what we were made for, which is love. At least someone could look at those broken shards and maybe come to the conclusion that there is a God who made us creatures for love, and therefore learn something about Him, even if we mucked it up. But with a heartless person? Lewis seems to condemn that person as not human at all, because there's no trace, not even a broken trace, of what humans are meant to be in them.

I just thought that was interesting. Because it makes you realize that mankind's story isn't "bad to good." It's more like, "good, to bad, back to good." Which is why any of us recognizes the need for God at all.

Anyway! Sorry for the ramble, I know you didn't ask for it 😅 I hope that gets you started? I also hope you blog about what you think of any of Lewis' stuff; I can't wait to read it. He's near and dear to me, so I like the thought of "sharing" his writing with anyone. Thank you'

#C.S. Lewis #Lewis #Lewisian #Inklings #Narnia #asked #answered #recommendations #books #reading #the ransom trilogy #abolition of man

[toaster-trash]

Do you think Adam would be homophobic/transphobic?

The fandom kinda forgets he’s hyper religious so I’m wondering your opinions

Eh, could be. I mean he wasn’t exactly hyper religious as much as super engrossed in Christian theology, which is a bit different? You wouldn’t exactly get a very very strict Christian being sympathetic to Satan, like he was. He basically just read bible fan-fiction and started to view the world through that lens. I feel like he’d have that view of a traditional heterosexual relationship between a cis man and a cis women and he’d be pretty fixated on that, but I also feel like if he encountered other types of relationships he wouldn’t be transphobic or homophobic. After all, kind of a big part of his character is that he feels damned for his existence, and I feel like if he came across that same feeling a lot of queer people tend to experience, his sympathy for that (like his sympathy for Lucifer being outcast/as queer people are often outcast for things out of their control, I feel like he’d sympathise with that) would likely overcome the theology he’s so versed in.

So yeah, I feel like he’d be a lot more likely to go the “ah, fellow creatures outcast and damned at birth by our mutual God” route than the “ummm actually it’s Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve 🤨” route, but I also think he’d mostly be exclusively sympathetic to queer despair than queer joy. I feel like if he encountered a loving happy gay couple or trans individual he wouldn’t exactly be homophobic, but he’d be more likely to go “alas, even my fellow members of creation cursed from birth are able to find in this existence their own happiness ~unlike me~” than to view them as just regular couples on the same level as a heterosexual couple.

So summary, tldr: he probably wouldn’t hold any contempt towards lgbt individuals and if anything he’d probably really sympathise with them, but he would probably still view them as fundamentally broken or damned from birth.

I can’t believe I just wrote an entire thing analysing if Frankenstein’s monster would theoretically be homophobic

#gothic lit #classic literature #gothic literature #goth lit #classic lit #frankenstein #frankenstein weekly #frankenstein or the modern prometheus #Adam Frankenstein #frankenstein’s creature #creature Frankenstein