Books Cost Too Much

At the same time, local prince charming discovers that he’s actually very into the gothic fiance his parents have landed him with in order to try and establish peace with the local evil lair down the lane, he would never have guessed a spiderweb pattern could look so fetching on a ball gown…?

meanwhile the villain bride’s friends are all like clearly he loves you not, why do you persist in a manner that will ensure your own heart break, i mean if he was taking this seriously there would be at least three assassination attempts by now.  it’s like he doesn’t even notice that you have massive amounts of dark power to covet for his own

smashcut to

fully armored knight, clanging through the hallways in attempts at stealth, blades drawn: i’m just saying, i took an oath of protection.  this feels wrong.

prince charming: it’s not wrong, it’s celebrating cross cultural traditions for my beloved bride

knight: it’s attempted murder

Sorceress friend: Please, just get him an amulet that will double his power at the cost of his soul, no one’s worth this.

Rebellious villainess: (nearly in tears) No, he brought his best knights to the castle and tried to kill me last week, at midnight, I can’t ignore something like that! He even kicked Cathulhu!

Sorceress friend: He nudged it with his foot. And then he apologized to it. In tears.

Prince: Of course, darling - may I inquire as to what for?

Villainess: Blood sacrifice to the dark gods, you know how it is.

Prince: …

Prince: …darling, you know I support your lifestyle choices, but I must say this before it potentially happens.

Prince: I’m not all right with human sacrifice. That’s one of my boundaries. I don’t know if you do that or not, but it seemed a topical time to bring it up.

Villainess: (carefree laugh) Oh beloathed, don’t worry yourself about such things, I would never!

Villainess: (leading him off to the goat market) Only incompetents use actual humans. Skilled practitioners of the dark arts know that a goat is not only a sufficient sacrifice, but the superior one.

She arrives in diaphanous white silk edged with lace that gives the impression of beautifully tattered hems, all of it drifting gently around her on the spring breeze to give the feeling of a wraith from a haunted castle or something of the such. While not her personal cup of tea, she finds the ritual very moving, and absolutely understands why its one of her beloathed’s favorites.

One of the nobles from her kingdom, meanwhile, decides, fuck it, and just turns the prince into a frog. It takes her two minutes to find and fix him.

Villain noble: How.

Villainess: True love’s kiss, bitch.

Villain noble: (seethes)

Villainess: Are you surprised I can? It’s a common ability.

Prince: I didn’t want to assume.

Villainess: …

Prince: (sweats)

Villainess: …you’re picturing me turning into a dragon and riding on my back into battle, aren’t you?

Prince: N-no, no, of course not-!

Villainess: (drapes in his lap) It’s okay, we’d look fantastic. (sly expression) And probably scary enough to get the enemy forces to surrender without any needless bloodshed.

Prince: (sweating) Darling, are you trying to tempt me into putting you into a position where you could be injured in battle?

Villainess: A little. :3 (more seriously) But it is also on the table if we ever need to defend our throne. It’s the sort of thing that form’s for, really.

Prince: If you’re comfortable with it, then very well, it shall be added to the list of acceptable strategies.

(comfortable cuddling for a moment)

Prince: I imagine you make a very majestic dragon.

Villainess: (preening) I really do.

Prince: Perhaps we should have a tapestry done of it, then? It could hang opposite the one of my family’s crest in the throne room when we someday ascend the thrones ourselves.

Villainess: 8O! Beloathed, I would adore a tapestry of that! (cuddles further against him) Oh, and across from your family crest! That would be such a slap in the face to my parents, having a tapestry of me there instead of their own crest.

The Prince listens patiently to her frustration until she’s finished, then considers for a few minutes.

“Darling, about that banquet your family’s having next fortnight - will your cousin be in attendance?”

“Yes, he’ll be using it to lay the groundwork of his plans. Why?”

“Would it be all right if I popped in for a bit? And was rather more… myself than I usually am around your parents?”

“…I suppose it’d be all right.”

“Wonderful!” (kisses her hand) “Perhaps wear those full-arm gloves your friend got you for the event - the ones that allow you to handle blessed objects without them interfering with your dark powers?”

“Well now I’m just curious. I shall do as you request, beloathed.”

The night of he shows up to the banquet positively radiating charm, good will, and benevolence, decked out in full armor that’s glowing slightly. Oh this? It’s the ancestral trappings of one of his relatives who was a champion of the stellar deities, those who guide ones who have become lost in darkness? He’s not a holy champion himself, but he is a fully-realized warrior of light and family, so he’s permitted to wear it at times. Oh yes, he completed his warrior of light trials when he was eighteen, when on a quest and everything! That’s where he earned his sword - it’s actually a shard of sunlight, you know, not metal. That’s why he’s called Prince of the Sun and Stars sometimes - bit of a grandiose title, really, but the artists and poets enjoy playing with the imagery, and who is he to deny them, especially when Darling is so fond of the stars herself! There’s a lass in one of the kingdom’s villages doing a portrait of the two of them together playing with that motif, actually, and it looks like it’s going to to be absolutely lovely when it’s done-

And he continues to be cheerful, charming, and just the nicest, most polite guy for the time he’s there while also reminding everyone in no uncertain terms that, for as long as the forces of evil have been trying to quash the forces of good, his side has been working at the opposite. And his side tends to win more often. And maybe it would be wise not to pick a fight with Darling because he’d hate to have to do battle with a potential in-law in the path of supporting her family’s traditions regarding people who cross them…

Jerk cousin is thoroughly cowed out of making an attempt at the family-filled jewels, and Villainess’s friends are standing with her off to the side going, “Okay, beginning to see what you see in him now.” Villainess herself is walking around with on safely-gloved hand on his arm as he intimidates the hell out of everyone she knows in order to help her protect what’s hers, swooning a little bit inside the whole time.

Princess: “You like it? It’s made of giant spider silk straight from the underdark!”

Prince: Oh uh that’s really- wait, you can make clothes out of spider silk?

Princess: Yeah! It’s really tough too! You can even make light armor out of it.

The two have a several hours long conversation about spider agriculture. The prince receives spider silk under armor as a wedding gift.

This throws Villainess through a loop, people don’t tend to whole-heartedly throw their trust in others like this at her place, this is super unsettling, so she just responds in the way she usually would, “Oh? And what price are you willing to pay?”

“Anything.”

…ooooooooh that is so, so tempting, why are people in this court so earnest, don’t they realize that the reason the higher nobles are worried about her marriage to their prince is the very real potential that she could use this opportunity to cast their country and its people into a thousand years of ruin and despair, bare minimum…?! But it would make Darling unhappy if she’s too mean about this, so, “How about your dignity, then? First off, we’ll have to get you out of that dress…” (seductive smirk and cock of the hips)

Court lady: (still in tears but hands immediately go to her bodice laces to start undoing)

Villainess: (grabbing her hands) OKAY, WHOA, HOLD UP, WE’RE IN THE MIDDLE OF COURT, HAVE SOME STANDARDS!!! Just- just go put on something you don’t mind getting all messed up, we’re going to have to get in the moat a bit for this, and even the edges are all muddy.

Court lady: Oh. (sniffles) Okay. Thank-you.

They spend the next three hours dredging around the moat to find the right newt and then perform the right ceremony to turn him human again. He appears naked and covered in mud and court lady unabashedly flings herself into his arms, sobbing in relief this time, and it’s disgustingly wholesome and romantic.

Newt Lordling: (once he’s finished doing a bit of sobbing of his own into his fiance’s hair) Wait, aren’t you Neskatina’s friend? Could you tell her that my sister likes daffodils? Girls, and daffodils? I tried to tell her myself, but the newt thing happened before I could get past asking her to stop with the threatening letters. We- we really don’t send those around here unless we mean it, she’s been finding it a bit upsetting. Daffodils would be much better received.

Prince: She’s grateful to you and wants to be friends.

Villainess: (glowering suspiciously) Sounds fake.

Prince: She thinks you’re nice.

Villainess: Disgusting.

She still goes when Court Lady invites her on a trip to the meadows with some of the other ladies to pick greens, all of them surprised by the discovery that going out to gather flowers and useful herbs and such is something ladies from both courts do from time to time (though for very different reasons). It’s common sense to wear an older outfit that’s all right to get a bit grass- or mud-stained (ladies from the Prince’s court call them their ‘daisy dresses,’ Villainess and her friends call them ‘gathering gowns’), and Villainess is kind of shocked that the pretty nobles from her beloathed’s court do this sort of thing.

The ladies all titter, then it’s story time, because you can bet most of them have a heroic/clever/wise relative somewhere in the family tree who was born a peasant and married or gained nobility for some feat or other, and it’s fun to have someone new in the group who hasn’t heard all the stories before. Villainess is surprised again, because she does actually know some of these stories, but from the relatives of the villain involved (usually told in a ‘you’ll never guess what so-and-so’s idiot relative got thwarted over’ sort of tone). Going on outings like this helps you stay connected to your roots!

Also, Court Lady turns out to be the daughter of the royal apothecary and has a deep knowledge of the properties of various mushrooms. She even knows about poisons because they’re used in medicine sometimes. Villainess might be starting to like her as a person.

Another lady finds a patch of old teasels and braids them into a crown for Villainess, because “They’re all dark and spiky, and about the same colour as your daisy dr- ah, your gathering gown! We tend to make each other flower crowns when we go out, but I thought you might like these better.”

Villainess: …won’t they get deceptively yet horribly tangled in my hair, making the crown stay on well but an absolute nightmare to take off?

Lady: (terrified that she’s judged wrong) Yes…?

Prince: It had to have been a villain that invented it, your side’s the one that gets all clever with ropes and knots and everything!

Villainess: No no no, it must have been your side, because safe words and after care!

They are both very perplexed, but also in absolute agreement that they will not be asking their parents about this.

Villainess: Beloathed, what do you think of your father’s advisor?

Prince: Him? Oh, he’s been with the family since my father was a boy. He practically raised Father when my grandfather fell ill. We are lucky to have him with us.

Villainess: …are you aware that he’s evil?

Prince: Hm? Oh, yes.

Villainess, now a bit confused: And you haven’t removed him from the job? I would have assumed that your people would not tolerate this kind of darkness, especially so close to power.

Prince, shrugging: It’s kind of a tradition, to be honest. The King’s advisors have all been evil for… well, centuries now. It’s something that mostly goes unspoken. The position tends to corrupt people. Eventually he will reveal a daring plot, and I will defeat him to protect the light and discover something new about the side of good.

Villainess: Hmm. I suppose that makes sense.

(notices his hand)

Is- oh gods, he’s wearing a ring in the same colour as her jewels, oh that’s such a beautiful, subtle little touch, I love it!

Hell yeh they’s totally get along!!! *insert spiderman meme here

But nope! She and their son just… fell in love. True love, no less! And you can’t mess around with true love, it’s immoral! And also illegal! True love is a very real and provable thing in this setting, and there are laws protecting those who find it from being forcibly separated from one another. And a lot of those laws are specifically in regards to royalty and nobility finding true love with and marrying unexpected partners. For the stars’ sake, Great-Grandpapa was a duck before the whole business with the sorceress and Great-Grandmama, and no one batted an eye at that marriage!

Thus it is with pained smiles and great internal suffering that they welcome the Villainess into the family, and be supportive to their son and his fiance. They’re not fooling anyone about how happy they actually are to have her here, but they’re doing their best, and that does count. (Plus, the Villainess can sense their suffering during her every interaction with them, and it makes her feel and warm and happy inside.)

Meanwhile, the Villainess’s parents are just openly furious with her. They’re evil, big flashy tantrums aren’t just allowed, they’re customary. Dammit, they had plans for this marriage and where it could lead! Expansion! Colonization! Enslavement! Torture! Two thousand years of darkness! But noooooo, their daughter has to do something as sooky as fall in love with that dopey-faced twit, and they can’t even retaliate against her properly because technically she’s upholding all their standards by defying conventions, breaking rules, making alliances that are to her own gain and everyone else’s detriment, widening her power base, and generally being insufferable to everyone she cares about.

They’re so proud of her, but also how dare she!!!

Like, that’s the straight-up text of the film, and it’s not especially subtle about it.*

I’m not saying gay people can’t be villains, but the whole point of Jareth is that his attraction toward Sarah is sick, and her rejection of him represents a triumph of good over evil – it’s very much a film born of the Stranger Danger narrative that was all over popular media in the 1980s. I’m sure it’s possible to do a same-gender version of that without falling down the slippery slope of Unfortunate Implications, but it doesn’t feel like that concern is even on the radar in a lot of these proposals.

CW: Long meta, rape mention, frank discussion of Problematic Teenage Fantasy Boyfriends

Labyrinth is pretty clearly a Symbolic Coming-Of-Age Story ™ about the Role Of Fantasy in the life of a Young Woman, right? it’s about how you need to have a healthy relationship with fantasy. you can’t let it push away the people you love, you can’t let it control you or blind you to what’s there. but it can help you make lasting friends, and when you need it most- for any reason at all- it’s there.   

it’s pretty much text that everything in Labyrinth is part of Sarah’s imaginary world. Everything in the Labyrinth is either something she sought out and loves- her plushies and statuettes, her music boxes and books- or some part of herself, some want or fear or dream, given form. 

And a lot of girls like Sarah- bookish, daydreamy, intellectually gifted but emotionally immature girls who’ve been steeped in a lot of crap about relationships from the world we live in - have a Fantasy Lover who looks and acts a lot like Jareth. 

He’s Intense and kind of scary– because when you’re at that age, anything to do with romance or sex is intense and scary. He’s passionately, obsessively devoted to you, because it feels good to be needed and a teenager hasn’t got the life experience to realize that IRL that kind of obsessiveness is a red flag. He’s an older man- sometimes much older- so that he knows what he’s doing and can show you what to do, but he’s as pretty and graceful as an age-appropriate crush would be. He’s Flawed and Broody and a bad boy- but it’s blatantly obvious that he has good qualities; he will gladly make a fool of himself dancing just to make a baby smile. 

 And the Fantasy Lover is often… yes… kinda predatory. He’s a vampire, or a werewolf, or a Phantom, or a Goblin King. He comes onto you, not the other way around; he chases you, and you run for a while before falling into his arms and being Ravished. He leads when you dance; he tells you “do everything I say, and I will be your slave”.

But there’s a reason for this. in modern American society- and this was even more true back when Labyrinth was being filmed- women are not supposed to want sex. even having fantasies about having a passionate lover you sought out that you want can get a bit ~taboo~. and if you’re a teenager- especially if you’re a sheltered teenager with no female friends or family, no one to tell you that what you want is okay and normal- it can feel weird and bad and scary to fantasize about, well, initiating consensual sex. you don’t feel like you’re allowed to; Nice Girls don’t. 

so oftentimes, the Fantasy Lover blurs into rape fantasy territory. he knows exactly what you want and he gives it to you, no matter how many times you say no. you deny yourself any agency within the context of your fantasy, but since it’s just a fantasy, you’re having your cake and eating it too– after all, you can stop whenever you like. you still get to be a Nice Girl, a Good Girl- you didn’t do anything wrong, even in your own head- but you get all the poorly-choreographed Imaginary Romance Bodice-Rippin’ you want. 

normally, this is a pretty harmless coping mechanism. the thing is… “denying herself her own agency” is one of Sarah’s big flaws.

 She tends to immediately deny that she made bad decisions, to act like bad things just happen to her because It’s Not Fair, to balk when there’s a problem she can’t immediately solve. heck, selling Toby to the Goblin King in the first place is sort of a backhanded denial-of-agency – she doesn’t want anything bad to happen to Toby even though she resents his existence, oh no no no, it was the Goblin King that stole the baby. 

 And Sarah’s never in any real danger from Jareth. the snake scared her, but it didn’t bite; the poisoned peach would have made her lose her memory and stay in her fantasy world forever, which is something that Sarah knows is bad, but still kinda wants on some level. at their final confrontation, he doesn’t try to kill her, doesn’t try to fight her– because he can’t. 

Jareth is Sarah’s Fantasy Lover. He can’t do anything that Sarah doesn’t want him to. he’s predatory because Sarah wants him to be, because then she doesn’t have to accept that she wants sex and romance; she can pretend it’s just another thing that happens to her. the reason Jareth is so out of control in the text is that Sarah has given away all control. 

the final confrontation in Labyrinth, isn’t Good Versus Evil in the sense that you mean; it isn’t Sarah destroying Jareth forever, or kicking him out of the land. Hell, he shows up at the end in barn owl form, while all the muppets are having a dance party in Sarah’s bedroom– he’s a part of her inner, fantastic world, and has just as much right to be there as Ludo or Hoggle or the little dudes with the ostrich hats. but he’s only a part of that world, and he’s not the part that matters most, or the part that has say.

their final confrontation is Sarah accepting, and taking responsibility for, her inner life. she is the one in charge of her destiny; she wants what she wants, she needs what she needs, and she will take responsibility for both. she doesn’t need Jareth to do things “to” her so she can pretend she doesn’t want them to happen. her will is as strong as Jareth’s, and her kingdom as great.  he has no power over her. 

so like…I get where you’re coming from with recognizing the Unfortunate Implications and all. “Gay people are sexual predators” is still A Thing, and in the real world, yeah, Jareth would be a creepy pedo stalker. assuming our civilization survives and all, I hope that someday people look at Labyrinth the way we look at Baby, It’s Cold Outside and completely miss the point. :V  

…but c’mon. a kid who grows up being told that they don’t really want the things they want– and if they do want those things, they’re Literally Satan– is gonna have so very much more trouble accepting their own sexuality as they get older.  

When the Fantasy Lover is not human – vampire, werewolf, or Goblin King – then it comes with the understanding that the way he behaves is simply in his nature. There’s no need to fuss over wondering why he became this way (or whether he might become worse in the future) or whether you have an obligation to try to Fix Him with your love, or whether there was something you said or did to make him this way. He simply is.

(I mean, I Can Fix Him With My Love is also  a fantasy, but a different one. Sort of how like “I overcome the oppression” and “I don’t have to face the oppression in the first place” are both important fantasies for many minority groups, I Can Fix Him and I Don’t Have To Fix Him are both important fantasies for young girls.)

In your opinion, is it possible for those of other religions to observe the Jewish festivals with respect, with empathy?

Yes.  By accepting invitations by Jews to be guests at our festivals when we celebrate them.  Period.  

Any other method is stealing our culture and desecrating it.  Period.

To begin with, there’s a rhetorical trap here that I want to address.  I don’t “express disdain towards Christians who observe Jewish festivals”.  But “disdain” is an interesting choice of words, and I need to dissect it.  Because first off, it’s fairly mild, as such words go, describing a feeling of contempt, dislike, disgust… but also carries with it the implication that I consider myself superior to those I “disdain”.  

That is not the case, and this is part of why this ask was so hard to treat as being asked in good faith.  Saying that I “express disdain” conveys the implication that I’m somehow the person on top, looking down with scorn at these poor Christians who just want to “observe the Jewish festivals”!  And that ties into antisemitic stereotypes about Jewish supremacists (i.e. “only Jews are good enough,” “Jews are the Chosen People,” etc) and that’s a game I don’t want to play.  

So, no, I don’t “express disdain”, because I don’t hold myself as superior.  I just want my minority culture to be treated with respect and allowed to exist without having to justify it in a Christian context.

Now, with that being said, no, I do not hold them in “disdain”, because, as noted, that word is fairly mild as far as communicating dislike goes.  So let me be clear to communicate the depth of emotion here.  I express boiling outrage and furious loathing for these people.  I loathe them on a level I can barely express without dipping into superlatives.  I have ‘disdain’ for inconsiderate smokers.  I have dislike for “civility over substance, and promoting false balance” journalists.  I have disgust for anti-maskers.  I loathe Christians who “observe Jewish festivals”.  

Because “like we are stealing something from you, from your culture”, desecrating it” is in fact completely accurate–and the fact that you include yourself in that number does not do you any favors, which is why this was so hard to treat as a good faith ask.  

I’ll be blunt: Christianity has an entitlement problem when it comes to other people’s cultures, and always had.  In fact, as non-Christians are so frequently reminded at this time of year, “Christmas” started as a pagan holiday.  So did Halloween.  So did any number of other holidays that were made Christian.  So there’s the whole “learn from history” thing there, where I, and other Jews, would very much like it if our festivals didn’t end up becoming Christianized over the next few centuries.  Because we’ve learned from all of the other religions that Christianity has wiped out and paved over.  That’s the first point.  

The second point is that the reason we have our own festivals is that we inherited them from our ancestors and maintained them despite persecution.  And very often, that persecution was from Christians.  In Christian Europe, the Jewish people were marginalized, tortured, forced to do the horrible work, repeatedly expelled from our homes, legally discriminated against, made scapegoats of, and massacred.  European Christians hated Jews so much that one of the rationales given to legitimize the Irish conquest by England was that they were “Judaizers”!  And that legacy hasn’t gone away.  So after over a thousand years of brutality and violence, Christians don’t get to just “observe the Jewish festivals” as they see fit–because that’s just a continuation of that history of violence.  Just now, instead of expelling the Jews from their homes and taking those homes, like Christians used to do, this mindset is expelling the Jews from our own culture and taking it for yourselves.  

And third, if you want to talk Christians stealing our culture and desecrating it…

Let’s talk about “Messianics”.

Fifty years ago, a bunch of Christians who were dismayed that they were not having much success with converting Jews, which they believe is required in order to bring about the Second Coming, created a fake religion called “Messianic Judaism”–which is literally taking all of the festivals, rituals, and trappings of Judaism and profaning them by making them all about Jesus.  Jewish ritual objects are desecrated with the name of a Christian god.  Our prayer shawls are embroidered with Christian symbols. Our Torah scrolls are handled by bare hands.  Even our foods are reinterpreted in light of Jesus.  And this was all with the goal of tricking Jews into worshiping Jesus and thus wiping out Judaism, as per point one.

And that’s not even counting the fetish Christians have for Jewish paraphernalia.  The Green family (the ones behind Hobby Lobby) have a museum full of Torah scrolls acquired under… questionable circumstances.  Far-Right Christians love blowing Jewish shofars for some reason.  Buying Jewish prayer shawls by Christians is typical.  And on and on and on…

And there’s also the simple fact that, in their interpretation of Christianity–an interpretation that is common enough to be a plot point in those “Left Behind” stories–in order for the Second Coming to come about, all of the Jews must be gathered in Israel, the Gospel preached at us, and then we all die.  And those of us who accept the Gospels (supposedly exactly 144,000) will ascend to Heaven to escort down Jesus, while the remainder go to Hell.  

So our purpose in their worldview is for us to die as a sacrifice to bring back your god.

“These Jewish holidays where Christians used to massacre Jews for not accepting Jesus are now Christian holidays! They’re not “Jewish” anymore!“

Look at this post from @xenanichols , who presents themselves as a nice person, posting “things that make me happy”–which apparently includes taking Jewish holy days and shoving the Christian god on them.

Can this be done with respect? I’d say no.

And the thing is… these are Jewish things. The early Christians said so at the early ecumenical councils of the 3rd and 4th centuries, where they banned Christians from celebrating these holidays.

And if people want to go against those councils–the authoritative decisions of all of the world’s Christians at the time–so that they can celebrate these Jewish holidays, then you also have to give up everything else decided on at those councils.

Things like…

The Trinity. The Holy Spirit. The Divinity of Jesus. Jesus as Messiah.

And I realized something as a result, a synthesis of history and cultural backgrounds and all of that stuff.

So the people most responsible for this wholesale appropriation of Jewish culture for their own aggrandizement are American Christian Evangelicals and others in their immediate cultural orbit.

The thing is, Evangelicals are culturally descended from the iconoclastic Protestants (iconoclasm is “destruction of icons”, such as religious art); in short, during the Protestant Reformation, the Catholics went for religious iconography and art, and the Protestants went for academics and intellectualism as a way of distinguishing themselves from each other.

Later, much of American Protestantism–especially the Protestant-derived groups in the American slave states–proceeded to throw out most of their intellectual traditions in favor of institutionalized White Supremacy; there’s an excellent article on that here. So what you have left of “Christianity” at that point isn’t much–no art, no sacred objects, very little ritual. Mostly what they’ve got is totemic devotion to the idea of “Jesus”, but–thanks to the anti-intellectualism–very little familiarity with the man’s actual teachings. So it’s this very stripped down faith that is basically designed to operate entirely on appeals to emotion.

Thing is… humans crave rituals and venerated concepts, and the Christianity of the Evangelicals–where they’ve “chiseled God down to fit in a box”–doesn’t offer much of any of that.

But they can’t take back the sacred objects and rites of the Catholics, even though that’s part of their distant cultural heritage–that would be tantamount to admitting that the Catholics were right, and these people hate Catholics. However…

Their religion just doesn’t offer fulfillment on any level–not spiritually, not emotionally, not culturally. Because their own faith is so starved of anything that can give them a sense of meaning.

But they need to find something with emotional substance to it, because they’ve got nothing. Like, the precursor to this post started with me trying to think of something that was a sacred object to American Protestants, and irritably commenting to my sarcastic thoughts that, no, an AR-15 is not a sacred object! But that sarcasm was revealing, because I literally cannot think of anything that is sacred or venerable to Evangelicals that isn’t either a weapon or stolen from somebody else.

And that’s the thing.

Okay, so here’s the situation. Catholicism has these 7 sacraments. To describe it reductively, they’re the things you have to do to get into heaven. Essentially, baptism, confession, confirmation, marriage or nun/priesthood (which is considered a marriage to God), communion and last rites. These go hand in hand with the ornate chapels, the traditional mass, and the “smells and bells” as I’ve heard it called.

Hypothetically, Protestantism doesn’t need all that. But a lot of those sacraments are still somewhat a thing within the traditions of the church and the different denominations. There’s no confession, just encouragement to tell your pastor/pray. There’s no last rites. I can’t speak for every denomination, but there are traditional hymns and books for worship and traditions which are supposed to be followed. There are sacraments, but I can only think of two which are treated with any importance: baptism and communion (and a lot of squabbling about how/when/where you do these things has lead to many different denominations). But these sacraments are often treated as… not sacred and kind of annoying.

In white churches, there are almost always *less* people on communion sunday. Confirmation and baptism are either treated like that annoying thing you have to sit through before you can leave church, or an occasion where you get free cake. Also, most protestants don’t do a proper bread and wine, but grape juice. (This is a longer theological debate that I’m not getting into.)

And all of this reductions are in full force just in denominations where the traditions are closer to catholicism/orthodoxy. The further you get from traditions, the wilder it can get.

Considering that basically since the 80s, the church has been bleeding members due to (in large part) alienation caused by the religious right, increased ties to the NRA and the commodification of faith, protestants have been desperately trying to appeal to younger people by way of being more “hip” and “cool”. Rather than doing this by being accepting, helping the poor, supporting reform, making any real internal change, the church has chosen to do this by throwing aside traditions in favor of “modern Christian music” (which is basically shit on a stick, but that’s a passionate rant for a different time), having a “praise band” and basically removing even fundamental things from worship like the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed. There’s now coffeeshops instead of outreach. It’s very rich/middle class and in many ways even more combative toward anyone who is poor or non-white, non-christian, or queer. All of this is also wrapped in a very smug bow.

So basically, even American Protestant denominations which are more steeped in tradition and ceremony have being struggling to find an identity when there’s a general thought that “young people find the traditional stuff borring”. So, when you’ve literally ripped out your identity rather than support any type of change, in a shitty half hearted attempt to appeal to “outsiders” while also still serving the conservative members who pay your bills, suddenly you don’t have an identity. Even our holidays are fucked up. Christmas is honestly nice, but not truly important. Easter is actually important. Like really important. Both are treated as spectacle, pagents, gore-porn, modesty-porn and all ton of other things. But they aren’t ceremonies anymore. Not really.

So, there’s no emphasis on sacrament, ceremony, history, the actual sacred texts or traditions. And those things can’t be re-added because they’re seen as unappealing. (They are also reminders that hypothetically you should be helping other people, not supporting guns, which those loudest/in power don’t want you to remember.) So what are they doing? Appearantly claiming traditions that aren’t ours.

It doesn’t help that so much thought/literature is antisemitic, to the point that I know so many kind, loving people who are just casually antisemitic in the “oh, they don’t know better” way. I’ve taught Vacation Bible School (a week long jesus-themed summer babysitting situation, tbh) a few times. These are basically prefabricayed materials churches can buy and use, and everyone basically does the same one every year because they all buy frlm the same company. I specifically remember one year I was supposed to read (from the script) something that was just so casually antisemitic that I’ve literally changed the whole lesson to avoid using anything written. I’m still haunted by it bc while I could change it, I didn’t know how many thousands of people just read the script as is, or what any of those kids remember.

So, to try and sum up: American Protestants have stripped away their religious identity to either worship at the altar of Republicanism, or to try and draw in younger generations while refusing to move on anything actually important. The antisemitism can be so baked in that even without being openly hostile, there’s a lot of infantilization. As such, the church feels more than happy and welcome to go all grabby hands for “new ideas”, the new ideas being Jewish religious traditions in this case. Because celebrating these holidays is “new” and “exciting” and can both be presented as being more open to diversity (it isn’t), and being more traditional (it also isn’t).

To add to what’s been said, there’s also two other mindsets that feed into this: 1 - “We don’t need this” - a superiority thing that’s mostly been covered above (rejecting Catholocism and iconography), but further than that, the whole “we have the Spirit and that’s a direct link to God and any ritual is unnecessary “going through motions” mentality runs deep. They genuinely do not see their own rituals (the ways they pray/worship/sing/celebrate/study etc.) as the same thing as the spiritual rites they look down on. The specifics of what is allowed and what is looked down on changes with individual groups. 2 - “This could be demonic” - because of the possibility of losing salvation, there is a lot of fear of “backsliding”, “spiritual influence” and other forms of “opening yourself up to demonic forces”. This is why yoga is bad and praying to the saints is bad and anything that might be occult is bad. If you’re doing an unsanctioned spiritual practice (be it speaking in tongues, meditating, or what have you) then it’s possible whatever is happening is actually from the devil and you’re at risk of losing your ticket to heaven.

That explains a lot of why they have to treat our rituals like how Immortan Joe treats his property–emblazoned with Jesus on everything.

Like, seriously, I’ve seen them try to explain why matzo is perforated as being symbolic of Jesus… when it’s actually just done that way so it doesn’t bubble up into a balloon when it’s baked. The Hamantashen’s triangular shape is because of the Trinity.

Honestly, part of the prelude thought process that went into this post was me trying to think of something that was sacred to these people that I could compare to get across the degree of violation that comes with their profanation of our cultural objects and traditions.

If I were to say to anyone affiliated with Catholicism, however vaguely, “oh, that communion thing looked cool, and I like the whole thing, so I started doing it, but I took my own spin on it -I used my diva cup as a shot glass to incorporate real blood in celebration of the divine nature of the human body,” they would get it. Immediately. I don’t think I’d need to go quite that far to make my point; that was just chosen for shock value. I could talk about trashing a crucifix or something -my point is that Catholics understand the concept of sacred. Evangelicals, IME, don’t. 

Those pamphlets they throw all over the place with bible verses? The ones they’re expecting people to trash or step on or rip up or deface? I find the carelessness they have for their own holy word distressing. I’m Jewish. Our holy texts as used in ritual are hand-scribed calligraphic art pieces that we ornament. Our holy texts as used in study don’t get placed on the floor, get kissed if dropped, get buried when they can no longer be used. That someone cares so little for what they consider to be holy that they pass it out to be garbage is… disturbing. 

I am a Lutheran minister, and I have some thoughts on this.

(Also, on an unrelated note, I laughed out loud at the Wesleyan calling themselves “the closest you can get to Catholic without being Catholic” because no. That would be the Anglicans/Episcopalians or the Lutherans. Wesleyans, being descended from Anglicans/Episcopalians, are closer than say the Baptists or Pentecostals, but got rid of the Catholic elements that Anglicans and Lutherans kept. While there are theological differences, the structure of worship is the same in Lutheran and Catholic churches.)

First, the “ritual vs. intellectual” divide when Catholicism and Protestantism first split apart was very real. Martin Luther, the one who kicked open the process of the Reformation, was a university professor; for the first few centuries, most of the major Protestant leaders were very highly educated (many of them being university professors themselves). This is not to say that there weren’t a lot of deeply intellectual and smart Catholic theologians and leaders; but that was largely in support of the existing ritual/mystical/theological edifice, not seeing if they could work Christian theology out from first principles, the Bible, and their (very wrong) understanding of the Bible’s formation and the history and culture surrounding it.

A lot of Catholic ritual and mysticism was good and awesome; some of it was predatory. Consider indulgences, the thing that Martin Luther first broke with Catholicism over: they were basically selling the hope of heaven in order to raise money to pay back a loan that was taken out so that a church official could bribe the Pope to give him a better job. What started as “this specific practice is a problem, and also is not in the Bible so you can’t defend it that way” became “anything not directly commanded in the Bible is unnecessary.” And through schismogenesis (where people define themselves as Different From Those Other Guys and react by making themselves as different as possible) most Protestant groups got rid of everything. (Anglicans and Lutherans took a middle way of only getting rid of stuff we specifically had objections to instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.)

Which left intellectual study as the thing Protestants rallied around. It’s all about having the right understanding, being able to correctly interpret the Bible. There are two main problems with this. One is that humans need ritual on the deepest level, and (aside from Lutheran and Anglican churches) there wasn’t much left (and even most Lutherans and Anglicans had a lot less than Catholics had).

The other problem is that it’s inherently exclusionary. Anyone can have a mystical experience; any member of the church can participate in the Sacraments. Anyone can take comfort in beautiful art and music in the worship service. But not everyone can go to seminary and get a theological degree! Most people can’t!

So starting in the 17th Century you get all these Protestant lay (i.e. not led by clergy) movements that are all about piety and emotion, because they need something. The academic debates of the great scholars at the universities, while interesting on an intellectual level, don’t really fill the spiritual hole that’s been left. There’s a lot of mutual antipathy between the clergy and the lay movements because the clergy are offended at not being in control, and also there are lots of theological “problems” in many of these lay movements (i.e. stuff that contradicts the doctrines being promulgated by the university theologians). The lay people who are members of these movements are offended by the clergy trying to control them and denigrating their heartfelt spirituality. There’s a lot of class conflict involved, because the vast majority of university-trained ministers aren’t peasants, let’s just say. And in most places, the clergy (professional, upper-middle-class, agents of the social hierarchy and sometimes actual government employees) can call on the local social and governmental forces to try and clamp down on and harass these lay movements.

So then you add the American colonies into the mix. Some of the people most likely to go are these lay movements that are being harassed, and they’re hostile to the university-trained theology for very good reasons. One, they find it spiritually sterile, and two, the educated clergy have been using their education as a club to beat them with. You did get a lot of people who were loyal to the standard religious hierarchy and doctrine coming over to settle “America,” too! They were the majority, in fact! … what you didn’t get were many of the university-trained professional clergy who knew the intellectual underpinnings of their brand of Christianity. Because the university-trained professional clergy were middle class people with good jobs, why should they want to move to a foreign place? It took until the late-19th-Century for denominations that wanted educated clergy in the United States to be able to train all their own clergy without needing to import them from Europe.

Meanwhile, those lay movements have spawned and grown and provided an alternative to the traditional intellectual Protestantism that was so hard to do in the United States because there simply weren’t enough universities. Meanwhile, all those European immigrants are getting presented with the Faustian bargain of White Supremacy: you can have all the benefits of whiteness, but only if you get rid of most of your cultural and religious distinctiveness (and are willing to help oppress people of color).

Meanwhile, in intellectual circles in the US and Europe, starting in the 19th Century you get a lot of snobbery about “superstition” and how the difference between Catholics and Protestants is that Catholic religion (and all folk practices of any religion) are just “superstition” and nobody sensible could possibly believe in miracles or nonsense like that. And the Protestant groups that want educated clergy, those are the circles many of the clergy are coming from! Those are the people they want to impress! You get a lot of Biblical interpretation focused on finding alternate “scientific” explanations for miracles and stuff like that. The non-education-centered American Christians see this and are horrified and are confirmed in all their beliefs about how education is the enemy of religion.

Also, the late 18th Century is when literalism started taking hold in European and American thought at all levels. And it got applied to everything (and it still is), including the Bible. By the early 19th Century, Biblical scholars and theologians in universities are noticing that if you take the Bible literally, it’s got a lot of internal contradictions. And also, it contradicts all the things science was beginning to tell us about the world. (And also, then you have to take miracles seriously which is embarrassing when you talk with other people in your intellectual circles.) So they start asking questions like “how would people at the time have understood and interpreted these stories?” (i.e. historical criticism) and other ways of understanding the texts which still take them seriously, but without needing to believe that creation LITERALLY took 6 24-hour days. (This all actually gives space for a rebirth of spirituality that is congruent with intellectual studies, but that took a while to develop.)

Anyway, the anti-clerical American Christian groups took a look at that and hit the roof. It was proof, it was the nail in the coffin that all those over-educated types were absolutely not Christian any longer (if they ever had been) and only the true Christians like themselves (who were now calling themselves Evangelicals) knew how to interpret Scripture, and education could only lead you away from Jesus. And after a lot of debate, that led to the publishing of the Fundamentals starting in 1910 and the birth of Fundamentalism.

And then World War II happened, and by the time it was over, White Christians started flocking to the new suburbs. But crucially, their churches and communities didn’t come with them. They formed new churches and communities, based on nothing more than bland white-bread conformity. And church attendance was at an all-time high! A higher percentage of Americans attended Christian worship during the 50s than during any other decade in American history! Not because the War Generation was any more faithful than their forebears, but because after the labor movements of the 30s and the war in the 40s, they were joiners. They joined everything. Clubs and associations of every kind blossomed in the 50s and 60s! Bowling leagues! Fraternal organizations! Churches! You name it.

Then came the Baby Boomers, who weren’t going to join anything they couldn’t see immediate personal benefits to. And there wasn’t much benefit to those bland suburban churches because there wasn’t any “there” there. No mystic ritual. No deep intellectual discussions of Life, the Universe, and Everything. There wasn’t anything deep there, and there wasn’t anything cool/groovy/fashionable, either. The culture started changing. Alternatives to being Christian sprung up as people looked for a spirituality that was actually … spiritual. It was normal for kids to leave home at age 18 and create new social groups, which made it a hell of a lot easier for them to leave the church if they wanted to.

Evangelicals and Fundamentalists responded by cracking down on controlling their members and indoctrinating them that the world is evil, leading to a rise in religious abuse in Christian communities. Mainline denominations stuck their head in the sand and basically ignored it. (”They’ll come back to church when they have kids!”) The Evangelical/Fundamentalist option was effective in the short run but backfires in the long run; the mainline option wasn’t effective in either the short run or the long run.

And now both groups are panicking because the writing is on the wall. They have no idea what to do that might actually work. And they have no sense of how to create authentic ritual or express the deep theological convictions they have to anyone who doesn’t already share those beliefs.

Bear encounters in North America.

link to main page about bad art friend

This won’t be long. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to people who have gone through the group threads I mentioned in the main page, but GrubStreet is not a good employer. To explain why, it is important to understand that everyone involved in shit-talking Dorland in groupchats was in a more senior position than her in GrubStreet.

the complaint

My opinion is based on @/kidneygate’s thread on Dorland’s HR complaint against Sonya Larson that she launched on July 2, 2018. Apart from everything we know, Larson also physically ignored Dorland at a conference that she had traveled from a different city to attend. Dorland also claims to have a witness to Larson ignoring her. I can see why people might want to scoff at this particular detail - why is Dorland so offended at Larson ignoring her? Well, for one - Larson literally hired Dorland, and she ignored a presenter while acting as assistant director of the conference. When you’re assistant director of a conference, you don’t get to ignore one of the presenters of the conference; that is deeply unprofessional and bordering on harassment. The assistant director has some responsibility towards the people employed, she can’t just ignore them when she wants.

Another point mentioned in Dorland’s complaint is how Larson asked her not to write about race. This is ofcourse not professional at all, especially at a writer’s workshop, but it does give you some idea of how Larson seemed obsessed with Dorland’s views on race.

the people

Two people who were berating Dorland privately were, in some way, involved in the handling of her HR complaint (if the cc list of the email dismissing Dorland’s complain is anything to go by).

This is one of the many chat logs we have of Alison insulting Dorland to Larson, but I think one is sufficient to prove that she should definitely not be handling a complaint launched by Dorland against the person Alison was berating her to. Crucially, in August 2016, she stated “we will all ice her out” if Dorland “messes with” Larson.

Chris Castellani is an asshole. I don’t know him, I don’t ever want to - but that email can only be written by an asshole. Now there is nothing wrong in assholes handling HR complaints, but he clearly despises Dorland, and also postal workers (making him even worse).

the handling

Dorland received a “thank you for letting us know” response on July 3, 2018. After almost two months of ineffective responses to the complaint, Dorland resigned on August 31, 2018. In response to her resignation email, the founder of GrubStreet writes “we did all of this in good faith”, while cc’ing the people I’ve mentioned above. Interestingly, Larson helped grow GrubStreet’s program from 80 classes a year to 600 classes a year. Clearly, her contribution to GrubStreet was huge and brought in a lot of revenue - one can only guess how that affected the seriousness with which GrubStreet handled the complaint against her.

We don’t know the what’s in the internal documents of GrubStreet, and if they ever properly investigated Dorland’s claims. What we do know that two people involved in the investigation despised Dorland. We also know that Dorland’s claims are serious and she also claims to have proof of them.

First, it takes much more compute than he was expecting. He investigates, and finds that simulated-him also fantasized about being wealthy, got access to the local supercomputer, and started running simulations where he wins the lottery the day he graduates college. In retrospect this was predictable -it just means the simulation is high-fidelity. In fact, the simulated simulation is also high fidelity, and the problem keeps repeating. The chain of higher-level-him simulating lower-level-him, and making lower-level-him win the lottery on the last day of college, is at least hundreds of layers deep. He can't even trace how deep it goes.

Second, he wins the lottery on the day he graduates college. Which is pretty odd, since he doesn't remember buying a ticket.

What happened? Well, suppose he observes the chain of simulations and finds that it's, let's say, 209 layers deep. Each version of him thinks it's the real version, and has no clue that he's living in a simulation. From a standpoint of humility, he should ask something like "In each of the 209 layers below me, the version of me thinks it's in base-level reality, and is wrong. I am in exactly the same epistemic position as each of them. So what's the chance I'm in base-level reality?" Phrased this way, the answer is obvious.

Suppose you're a starving college student with access to a supercomputer, and you want to win the lottery. What if you deliberately set up this situation? I'm really not sure how to think about this, but who knows, it might work?

Okay, now suppose that you're in 10th century Persia. There's no such thing as supercomputers, and also you're a teenaged girl, and also the king is going to kill you tomorrow morning. What do you do?"

The second is a reply from cryptojuice that says "ok can someone explain how this maps onto a teenage girl in 10th century Persia bc that line is where they lost me"

Folklore or folk culture is shared like this:

Lore is shared person to person via word of mouth, with everyone getting it from a different source (and each source adding it’s own variations).

Mass culture or popular culture is shared like this: