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aletterinthenameofsanity · 3 months

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Y'know, there's this gripe I've had for years that really frustrates me, and it has to do with Love, Simon and people joking about it and calling it too-pg and designed-for-straight-people and all the like. (A similar thing has happened to Heartstopper, but that's another conversation.)

I saw Love, Simon in theaters when it came out my senior year in high school. I saw it three times, once with my friends/parents on opening night, once with my brother over spring break, and once with my grandparents.

On opening night, the air in the room was electric. It was palpable. Half the heads in there were dyed various colors. Queer kids were holding hands. We were all crying and laughing and cheering as a group. My friends grabbed my hands at the part where Simon was outed and didn't let go until his parents were saying that they accepted him. My friend came out to me as non-binary. Another person in our group admitted that she had feelings for girls. It was incredible. I left shaking. This was the first mainstream queer romance movie that had ever been produced by one of the main five studios, and I know that sounds like another "first queer character from Disney" bit but you have to understand that even in 2018 this was groundbreaking. Getting to have a sweet queer rom-com where the main character was told that he got "to breathe now" after coming out meant so much to me and my friends.

But also, from a designed-for-straight-people POV (which, to be frank, it was written by a bisexual author and directed by a gay man, this was not designed for straight audiences), why is it a bad thing that it appealed to the widest possible audience? That it could make my parents and grandparents see things in a new light? My stepdad wasn't at all interested in rom-coms but he saw it with me because it was something I cared about and he hugged me when we came out of the theater. My very Catholic grandparents watched it with me and though my grandpa said he still didn't quite understand the whole 'gay thing,' all he wanted was for me to be happy and to have a happy ending like Simon did. My Nana actually cried when Simon came out and squeeze my hand when his mother told him he could breathe.

And when Martin blackmailed Simon, my mom, badass ally that she is, literally hissed "Dropkick him. Dropkick him in the balls" leading to multiple queer kids in the audience to laugh or smile. Having my parents there- the only parents, by the way, out of my group of queer and questioning friends- made multiple people realize that supportive adults were out there. That parents like those in Love, Simon do exist in real life.

When people complain about Heartstopper not being realistic or Love, Simon being too cutesy, I remember seeing Love, Simon on opening night. I remember my friend coming out and my stepdad hugging me and my mom defending us through this character. I remember the cheers that went through the audience when Bram and Simon kissed and the chatter in the foyer after the movie was over and the way that this movie made me understand that happy endings do exist.

Queer kids need happy endings. Straight people need entry points to becoming allies. Both of these things can come together in beautiful ways. They can find out about more queer culture later, but for now, let them have this. Let them all have a glimpse at a better, happier world. Let them have queer joy.

#love simon #simon vs thsa #simon spier #spierfeld #bram greenfeld #my experiences #meta #the importance of queer joy #heartstopper #becky albertalli #my mom also watched rwrb with me last year when it premiered #and let me tell you that was interesting sitting in the room with her for an r-rated romance movie like that

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newjenns · 1 year

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newest school shooting hits me a little harder

#EXTREMELY triggering discussion in tags #every school shooting is … hard #i try to block them out #but something about this new one being at a christian school makes it a little more personal #i went to catholic school my whole life and was in elementary school when sandy hook happened #and when i went to high school there were shooter and bomb threats to plenty of local public high schools #and being from a small catholic private school you kind of get lulled into a false sense of security #why would sometbing like that ever happen to use when there are bigger and more prominent targets #not a great way of thinking but a real one #so see another small christian school be a target of gun violence makes me especially sick #more so than usual when a school shooting happens #how am i supposed to have kids one day if i can’t even send them to school #trigger warning #ask to tag

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novelconcepts · 10 months

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Watching my mom evolve over the years has been such a fun experience. For context, she's got nine kids (at least five of whom have turned out to be queer; at least four of those have turned out to be non-binary), and for most of my life, she was just your average Gen-X Irish-Italian Catholic mom. She didn't really do vocal homophobia or whatever, but she also clearly didn't know how to handle it when her firstborn interrupted a Red Wings game to announce, "I think I'm gay." (Spoiler alert: that was me at fifteen or sixteen. In retrospect, of course the Tomboy For Life who had never been remotely interested in boys but was ALWAYS talking about actresses/female friends at school a bit too much wound up being gay. And announcing it. During a hockey game. Of course.)

She also didn't really know how to handle that same kid starting to date in college, bringing a girl home, and so on. She did a bit better when the next kid came out as a lesbian, but when that kid came out as non-binary (shout-out to that sib for doing some of the heavy lifting first), it was a whole new deal. It clearly had never crossed her mind before, that this might come up. Gay? She was figuring out gay. Gender stuff? Whew. A shiny new Pokemon of a situation.

The changed pronouns have been a bit difficult for my mom. The new names still get jumbled. (In fairness, the old names got jumbled, too--it was always a laundry list of names before she got to yours, no matter what you went by, because there were just so goddamned MANY of us.) It gets harder when she's stressed, and sometimes she just seems not to be getting it. I know it frustrates my siblings deeply. It can grate on me, too. You just want people to understand out the gate, to take you at your word, to shift gears without a slip-up. You don't want the awkward conversations, the painful skips, the rough patches. It's tempting to just give up on people if they don't stick the landing immediately.

But if you look a bit deeper, there's such a soft mama bear energy to my mom. Such a stubborn determination to get it right where it really counts. My mother, who never once skipped Sunday mass as I was growing up, has left the church completely because "they don't treat my family well." My mother, who once told me not to bring a girl home because it might confuse the youngest children, bought Converse sneakers expressly for my wedding to a woman. And my mother, who had never known the word non-binary, who didn't seem aware of the trans umbrella at all before her kids started huddling beneath it, keeps leaping to tell me all about the shows she's watching lately. The ones where "there's a non-binary character, and it's so cool that people can see that now!" The ones where "and this one is non-binary, and they're so great, and maybe it'll teach the shitty politicians of the world that they're just people, you know?"

Sometimes you just have to give people a little space. Let them stumble occasionally. They're going to. They're going to trip up. My mom hurt my feelings so many times when I was young, said so many of the wrong things right on the heels of the right ones, confused and upset me because I couldn't understand why she just didn't get it. But here she is, almost sixty years old, and so gleeful to tell me about the power of queer representation on TV. She doesn't always get it right, but goddamn, does she love her kids, and goddamn, does she want the world to love people like her kids, too.

#lgbtq #queer stuff #i love my mom #watching her go from an 'eh politics whatever' catholic to someone who actively pays attention #watching her and my dad put love is love signs up in their yard #watching them work to untangle decades of thought patterns to figure out how to support their kids and people like them #it takes time. it takes more time than you'd like sometimes. but it's been so reassuring #people change. they can grow. they can learn. and they can be powered by love above all else #that's just the fucking best #and so is my mom

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ceasarslegion · 1 month

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I absolutely want to know the details of the needle abortion claim please

*end of the world voice* hokay, so.

In conservative catholic school sex ed, they taught us many egregiously false things. I have a list. The clitoris didnt exist, masturbation gives you cancer, having sex before marriage is like being a piece of tape that gets passed around and the more people it gets stuck to and taken off of, the more it loses its "bonding power." Babies born out of wedlock are more likely to have birth defects, STIs are gods punishment for being horny for anyone whos not your spouse, AIDS is a "sinner's disease" and a divine punishment against sodomy (that one was fun!), our teacher once told us that we didn't need to learn about contraceptives because they were sinful, just family planning so that sex would ONLY EVER BE FOR PROCREATION!!! And of course, the needle abortion claim

The claim was tied into another false claim that fetuses are like, fully-formed tiny babies that just get bigger as time goes on, because of course life begins at conception and fully-formed babies literally hatch from human eggs and thats why theyre called eggs (you think i am being sarcastic. They actually said this). So when abortions are performed, it's when a doctor takes a needle full of "poison" (never specified what the poison is btw, just poison) and injects it through the mother's womb, into the baby's brain, and lets it slowly and painfully die as the poison kills its brain. And then the baby is removed by C-section.

I remember this one so vividly because i went home and told my center-left but extremely feminist parents about it, upon which they went "HI WHAT-" and immediately pulled me from the sex ed class and started sending me to school with actually accurate sex ed homeschooling curriculums to work on at the library while my classmates were in sex ed. They didnt actually have to do this, my parents are just IB-certified high school teachers so any gap in education didnt sit right with them, and they knew which resources they could trust to make a way better lesson plan for me. But the bar was at the center of the earth after that. I didnt go to their school at this point because i was in junior high

And the catholic sex ed didnt stick much considering i grew up to be a world-class whore, but according the protestants thats the whole deal right

#ramblings

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meraki-yao · 9 months

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RWRB Feelings: Paris

Okay so everyone goes on about how beautiful and masterfully done the Paris love-making scene is, and that’s absolutely 100% true. I’ve seen comments and reactions that say they feel like they’re intruding and they need to leave the room, and all I could think was “Well that means everyone did their job perfectly.”

I wanted to share a bit on how I felt watching the scene.

Note that this is pretty personal and not me analysing it, it’s just my feelings on it.

My culture and environment are really conservative and traditional, so families don’t talk about sex. My first real exposure to it (besides biology class and the few explicit fanfics I innocently stumbled upon) was a talk at school when I was 14.

Now, my school is a Catholic all-girls school, so one point of the talk was the whole “don’t have sex until you're married thing” which I later realized is an antiquated notion: honestly as long as it’s safe and consensual, let people decide what they want to do with their own bodies.

But that aside, that talk was actually pretty good, and I was really focused on the speaker, because other than the religious notion, they also talked about safe sex, which biology class only touched on briefly and is always a good thing to learn about, and the part that I remember the most: the emotional aspect of sex, or more appropriately named in this circumstance, lovemaking.

The speaker said: “Having sex with your romantic partner, is saying wedding vows, making a declaration for love, with your bodies.”

I don’t know why, I didn’t entirely understand it, but I found that description beautiful, and remembered it.

Down the line I grew to learn that there are different ways to have sex: it can be fun, it can be passionate, it can be painful, whatever. And among the very limited sex scenes I’ve seen in shows and movies, they mostly kind of imply they’re doing it but never show what’s happening, which is okay with me, and also, I never really watched a sex scene that matched what the speaker said, which, again, okay. It's different, it's fine.

But when I watched RWRB and I got to the Paris love-making scene?

All I could think of was that quote.

“Making love is saying wedding vows with your bodies.”

This felt like that. This felt intimate, delicate, careful. But as much as it was the first time for Henry and Alex, it felt like some sort of consummation, there's some sort of beautiful finality to them. A moment going from “me and you” to “us”. In every facial expression, every flex of fingers, every breath and beat, you can see Alex and Henry falling more and more in love, bit by bit, second by second.

I haven’t had a romantic relationship in my life so far, and while I don’t identify as ace or aro, sometimes I don’t understand the appeal of sex.

But this was a moment where I watched it and went “Oh.”

“This is why people in love have sex.”

Seriously I cannot praise this scene enough. I feel like there should be awards for this scene alone. Round of applause of everyone involved in working on this scene, this ended up being such a masterpiece.

Sidenote: I was writing this, looking at gifs of the scene, and listening to You Matter to Me from Waitress and I started tearing up, what the fuck

#rwrb #red white and royal blue #rwrb movie #firstprince #alex claremont diaz #henry hanover stuart fox #henry fox mountchristen windsor #nicholas galitzine #taylor zakhar perez #matthew lopez #rwrb thoughts #rwrb feelings #I just... it's so beautiful #seriously

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fromgoy2joy · 5 months

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Hi! I have been off and on about my converion for a few years. My biggest road block is when I am asked by Rabbi’s or others “what is your reason for converting?”. My answers always seem off putting to the asker (jewish theology resonates with me, jewish ancestry, a love for jewish philosophy and torah principles). I wanted to ask how did you answer and navigate this question at the beginning of your journey?

hello hello! This is such a fascinating question that will merit a *long* response, so sit down, make yourself comfortable, get some tea etc. Sorry for making you wait, but I thought this would be a good post for me to reflect on on a Shabbat I can’t observe. (Family thingz and drama eek)

I entered the Jewish community in a somewhat unconventional way. As a college student, I decided to convert after years of thinking about it and a lifetime of longing for it.

I could go into a whole tangent about that, but short story. I’ve always felt pulled to Judaism and I always tried to fix myself into being a good Catholic girl. One of my earliest memories at 6 was being told to name my stuffed monkey after a saint and I chose Moses for her. Because I wanted her (and me) to be Jewish.

So after years of self torment, I entered college, pretty sure that I was going to convert but completely unknowing of how to start. But school started in September- it was all high holidays and that’s like bursting in on Christmas (not accurate portrayal but from a cultural Christian POV.) I kept on making excuses.

It was a little revelation I had to myself on a seemingly innocuous Friday night. That if if all religion is “disproven” tomorrow, I would still want to practice these traditions, and pass it down to my children. I would still want to be apart of this community and follow the philosophies.

That night was October 6th.

Then I woke up on October 7th and my world had completely shaken. I can’t even put the words into how I felt- it was as if I had blown out the candles of a birthday cake joyfully, unknowing of the darkness I was letting in.

I wept at the constantly playing news. I went to memorial services at local synagogues and struggled through (and got better at ) the Hebrew. I stopped all ham consumption and started to attempt at keeping kosher. And I started going to the Jewish life room provided by our university more and more often.

No one would be in there in the odd times I’d come in, but I started to read “Judaism for Dummies” on their somewhat uncomfortable couch. I was delighted to see that it was too simplistic for me, that there was so much I already knew. Then I moved on to the more complex books about Jewish literacy, philosophy and stories to get more well rounded. But that’s a hard place to start where I know about intense philosophical questions but not the Shema.

I really got involved in the community. I went constantly to shabbats, introduced myself to people around and met with leaders. I went to rabbis’ houses and played with their children. I got involved in advocacy. I walked to a minyan on a Friday night a mile off in the rain. I learnt prayers and butchered the pronunciation.

By the time I actually sat down with my converting rabbi, I’d been immersed in Jewish life for around 3 months.

So I covered bases with him- how I felt about Judaism, how I had learnt and practiced my faith in the limited time I had, but most of all how I had gone through hell and back with the Jewish people and how I never wanted to leave them.

(And then I got assigned 600 pages of reading. So success but at what cost? Just kidding just kidding!

My recommendation to you is- as much as you can- immerse yourself in Jewish community. Make it to prayer services. Help out. And if they ask the “who, what, why, where, when” on your conversion, you don’t have to over-explain. Just smile and say “oh it’s a long story, but this feels like home. “

Because that’s what Judaism is to me - and what it sounds like for you too. Home.

You’ll refine your answers to the other hard questions later. It sound like you already have those answers and your “why” .But making yourself at home here is what I’d (from my experience) recommend you focus on.

#fromgoy2joy thoughts #fromgoy2joy asks #jumblr #jewish #jewish convert #ex catholic to jewish convert specifically #tw October 7 #October 7 #jewblr #jewish convert perspective #jewish conversion #jewish conversion journey #jewish joy

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sapphire-weapon · 10 months

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You said that part of the fun of old fandom was making backstories for the characters. did you have one for Leon? what was it?

oh boy. this feels so... self-indulgent and cringey now in modern-day fandom, after having dedicated so much time to arguing what is or isn't canon and having to explain multiple times, at great lengths, that the mafia backstory is not canon and why it's not. my brain is just like "shut up and just be glad that people are starting to listen to you at all."

I've mentioned a few of them here and there sporadically over the past few months, so some of these are going to sound very familiar to people who have been following me for a while, but

this is basically the backstory I've come up with for Leon and have been using for mmmm around 20 years, give or take (though I tweaked some slight things to account for Remake Leon, which I'll also note):

● grew up in a suburb around the Hartford, CT area

● only child

● very religious/uptight Catholic mom, dad was basically Mike Cosgrove from Freakazoid

● like seriously, the personalities of his parents couldn't be more different, to the point where it almost doesn't make sense to anyone on the outside looking in how they ended up together at all. but his mom really loves how stable and grounded her husband is and appreciates his really awful sense of humor, and dad fell in love with his wife's cooking and the way she actually laughs at his jokes and the fact that she really believes in something greater than herself -- because he doesn't, and he wishes he did. they also share a taste in music, surprisingly.

● "Scott" is a family name, but Leon's dad was already "the third" and he was like "you really wanna put this kid through being 'the fourth'? that's stupid. just make it his middle name." Leon has never told a single person in his adult life this, but his parents and his very early childhood friends (up until about middle school) actually called him "Scottie" -- because "Scott" was his dad. (yes this headcanon was born directly from how funny I find the whole "Mr. Scott Kennedy" shit in OG RE4 and I'm not sorry) mom's name is Carol.

● mom was a middle school geography teacher (and CCD teacher). dad was a cop (he was bASICALLY COSGROVE)

● was always closer with his dad than his mom, despite the fact that his mom very clearly and very desperately wanted him to be a mama's boy. it wouldn't be quite correct to say that his mom was emotionally abusive, but she definitely didn't Get Him and very rarely actually listened to what he had to say -- she had a pre-constructed image in her head of the kind of person she wanted him to be, and anything that didn't fit that image was either questioned or ignored outright. (NOTE FOR REMAKE-VERSE LEON: this was even worse for Remake Leon, who has a lot more self-awareness than his OG counterpart and started to suspect that he may not be fully straight pretty early in life, even if his conservative upbringing didn't give him the language to express what, exactly, he was feeling. he had a crush on a boy once, vaguely mentioned it in a very roundabout way to his mom, and then spent the next like 10 years convinced he was going to hell. see here for a more in-depth explanation of how I view Leon's sexuality.) dad gave far less of a shit about who his kid was, so long as he wasn't doing dumb shit to get himself in trouble or arrested or something. as a result, Leon's really stupid sense of humor came from his dad, because they did spend a decent amount of time together. the two of them + Leon's uncle (dad's brother), who was maybe a little bit off his rocker, always went hunting once a year.

● was never super religious like his mom is, but still definitely believed. didn't pray regularly -- but prayed enough. he can pinpoint the exact moment that he lost his faith, though: when, while in Raccoon City, he first considered suicide -- and he realized that he was looking not to God for salvation, but to his gun. even as an adult, he won't outwardly classify himself as an atheist, but his general feelings towards God and faith are: "if God is up there, He's not listening anymore."

● wasn't ever super popular in school, but was never an outcast loser nerd, either. he was just kind of... there. he had his own little circle of skater kid/grungecore and metalhead friends, and they just kind of did their own thing.

● didn't actually start to get hot until senior year of high school and kind of thought that people were taking the piss when they started looking at him differently after he'd been so completely ignored as a dating/sexual prospect for so long. plus he had a girlfriend by then, and they'd been together for a while, so he didn't really think too hard about how other people were looking at him, anyway.

● he and his long-term high school girlfriend broke up before they both went off to college, mutually, just because they were going to different schools. (NOTE FOR REMAKE-VERSE LEON: OG Leon lost his virginity to that girlfriend at age 16; Remake Leon didn't. the Remake version of his girlfriend was too prudish to go all the way, but third base was a familiar friend.) this was to the great relief of the girlfriend's dad, who fucking hated Leon's guts and frequently told him that he would never marry his daughter (and once chased him out of the house with a shotgun, but that's a different story).

● played lacrosse in high school. didn't love it, mostly did it to put on college applications. actually wanted to play football, but his mom was adamant about not allowing him to (AND SHE WAS SUPER RIGHT HOLY SHIT DON'T LET YOUR KIDS PLAY AMERICAN FOOTBALL).

● dabbled in some arts stuff here and there in high school and college, but never in a serious way and never for any great length of time. he was more of a math nerd than anything else. but he spent like, half of a school year involved with the lit mag and, despite being a not terrible poet and short story author due to having an inherently romantic nature, dropped it pretty fast out of disinterest. tried being involved with the school paper, dropped that within a year due to disinterest. thought about picking up the guitar because some of his friends were musicians, but never committed to it. the only thing that ever stuck was an interest in film; he spent a decent amount of time in the A/V club and really enjoyed the editing process. probably would've majored in it in college if not for his far greater interest in criminal justice, so he just kept doing it on the side for fun. took some electives for it in college, at the very least, and worked on some student films. mostly horror films, which is ironic to him in hindsight.

● did not go into criminal justice because of his dad; it's just a coincidence that he ended up being interested in the same field that his dad worked. Leon has always had a problem with bullies and was that guy in high school who inserted himself into situations that didn't involve him, just to stand up for someone else. got in only a handful of fist fights as a result of this, and the extent of the scolding from his dad was "knock it off. quit screwin around. you screw around too much." in the most non-committal, "don't actually stop though" tone possible, followed by taking him to get burgers. his mom lost her mind any time he got sent home from school for fighting, though -- and the one time he actually ended up suspended was Literal Hell for that full week. but, either way -- for him, growing up with a very positive opinion of law enforcement to begin with, criminal justice seemed like a natural fit.

● beyond the few times he got in trouble for fighting (in fights he never started and always won), the worst trouble he ever got into was that time his mom found out that he and his friends snuck beer into a Green Day concert in 1994. that was also the first time she learned that her 17-year-old son was already drinking. he got grounded until graduation.

● overall was just a pretty good kid, though. constantly on honor roll. graduated college with a 3.7 GPA.

● mostly behaved in college, too, but he definitely went out and partied when he didn't have anything school-related to worry about. OG Leon partied way more frequently and way harder than Remake Leon did, though. OG Leon dragged his dick all over campus. Remake Leon had maybe a handful of drunken hookups (that still never actually got him laid) and spent most parties being that guy who was taking care of his much drunker friends. catch Remake Leon standing over one of his friends who has their face planted in the sand at a beach party like "hey man. you good? we can't leave yet. I gotta finish this beer." Remake Leon also made an excellent wingman.

● after getting hired at the RPD but before actually able to move out there (in late August, roughly), he did go out to Raccoon City to try to land an apartment so that he'd be ready once he actually did move. he filmed most of that week-long trip in a sort of self-documentary style and edited it all together with the intention of giving it to his parents before he left, in case they started to miss him -- so that they could see where he was and who he'd likely be hanging around with and all that stuff, because he is a Good Boy. he ultimately never finished the very last part of it because of the phone call he got to stay away from the city a week prior to his move, and he soon forgot he'd ever made something like that at all. his mom found it a few months later while cleaning up his room, which she did frequently as a grief response "so that it'll be ready for him when he comes home."

● to date, Leon's family and friends from back home think he died in Raccoon City. the CIA kept a tight leash on where he went and who he spoke to for the first four years of his captivity -- he basically didn't get freedom to live his own life until after Operation Javier. by the time he had the ability to call or visit home, he felt like it was too late -- that it'd be crueler to show up out of the blue after being "dead" for so long -- especially considering that he couldn't stay in their lives. he'd basically just be showing up to say "hey not dead" and then have to disappear again. so he just sort of... let it go. though, of all of the terrible things he's done in the time since then, this is the one thing that weighs heaviest on his conscience -- the one thing that he feels guiltiest about most often. but he continues to stay away, because he has nothing kind to say about the life he's lived or the man he's become. even if he were to go home now, he's convinced that his parents would not recognize their son.

● he doesn't know this, but there is an upright grave marker for him in a cemetery in his hometown dated 1977-1998. buried there is an empty casket with only a framed photo of him. his parents still lay flowers there twice a year: once on his birthday and once on the anniversary of Raccoon City's destruction.

#resident evil #resident evil 4 #resident evil 2 #leon kennedy #typing up some of this was kind of embarrassing and idk why #but thank u for the ask anon #my new D drive won't be coming in until wednesday so #i have nothing but time to answer long asks like this after work #pls keep sending them

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jstarr86 · 7 months

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This story will be posted over on my Wattpad as all my other chapter work is, please head over there for stories containing multiple parts and enjoy 🥰

CH 1

1992

I stepped out of the car, the moving van pulling up behind it. Florida all the way across the country. I didn’t know what to feel, it was pretty so far but I was kinda scared it was different and I didn’t know anyone. I saw my mom talking to someone and walked up to her. She paused looking down at me a smile gracing her face.

“This is Natasha, Sweetheart this is Ms Lisa” I waved she seemed really nice.

“Hi.” I said shyly. A little boy ran up a large smile on his face as he stopped looking at me.

“Hi I’m Joe.”

“Hi,”

“What’s your name?”

“Natasha.”

“Wanna play?”

“Um sure ok.”

“Cool come on.” I followed him not knowing I’d be doing it forever or that I’d met my best friend.

3 Weeks Later

I was playing with Joe, we’d played every day since I’d moved in. It was summer so he was really the only person I knew right now, but I was ok with that he was really fun to be around

“Hey do you wanna go to my cousins with me I’m sure no one will care.” He said goosing the ball

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah why not we’re going to be in school together they’re my best friends kinda like you. They’re twins.”

“Ok.”

“Joe are are ready to go? Hello Natasha.”

“Hello Ms Lisa.”.

“Mom can Natasha come.”

“If her mom there is ok with that I’m sure it’s fine.”

Getting to his cousins I followed Joe as he walked in and I already saw him talking to two boys

“These are my cousins, guys this is Natasha and this is Jon.”

“Hi.”

“Hi I’m Josh.”

Fatu twins and Anoai. I’d been friends with them since day 1 and when that used to be how they were called or triple threat. The four musketeers My best friends, my life. I was so grateful for them, they’d had my back since I moved here and I know my life wouldn’t be the same without them hell I don’t think the move or my life would be as amazing had I not met them

I’d met Joe at 6 when my family moved to Pensacola and we became next door neighbors. My father was in the Navy, I had been born in San Diego California spending the first 6 years of my life in Miramar California since my father was stationed there. TOPGUN I’m sure you’ve heard of it and it’s a real place it’s not there anymore it was moved to Nevada but back then it was also at that base. When I was 6 my father got a promotion and we moved all the way to Florida. They’d found a nice little home off base and that’s where I met Joe; He’s been my best friend since, and within weeks I was friends with his cousins Jon and Josh, those three have been inseparable their entire lives and Joe is just an extra brother instead of a cousin. Always hanging out, playing sports, watching wrestling every week, always together. I spent the summer playing with them and once school started I met more people but no one was ever like us four. We all went to school together our whole lives minus Joe's freshman year where he was at some private catholic school until he got Ms Lisa to switch him to Escambia where the twins and I were. All my classes was always with at least one of them, even though they were a year older I was smart and was skipped a grade so since I’d known them we were together. So much so that rumors always flew as we grew that it was more or like in late middle and through high school I was sleeping with all of them. My ego loves that because they were all fine as hell but was so far from the truth, for the most part. I had lost my virginity to Joe when I was 14 and he had just recently turned 16. His birthday was in May and mine was in August like the twins. Yeah we thought the other attractive but it was mostly a I feel comfortable with you do this, we always knew we were better friends and this never changed our relationship but come that Christmas season we’d both learn that someone was seeing me as more than a best friend and had for a couple years.

When we turned 12 I went from Nat to Snickers. At first I hated it but now I’m used to it. It stuck and everyone ended up calling me it. My best friends had called me it once it was clear puberty had it and it hit hard. One day I was the normal tomboyish girl not really anything and the next morning I had boobs, curves and a ass. I remember waking up freaking out crying and putting clothes on that didn’t fit me before I jumped out of my bedroom window and walking the two feet knocking on my best friends a blanket around me. He opened the window looking at me like I was crazy.

“You sick of something Nat?”

“Can I borrow some clothes?”

“Um yeah, why you have tons.” I sighed opening my blanket as his jaw dropped.

“Yeah and they don’t fit help me.” My shirt that used to be normal was to the middle of my stomach not being able to fit over my boobs and my shorts were way to small

“Holy shit.”

“Joe!”

“I um yeah come in.” He grabbed a big shirt and some basketball shorts handing me them and I quickly went to put them on. I went shopping with my mom getting all new clothes and the twins when they saw me freaked just like Joe.

“What the hell where did all that come from?”

“Where’s Natasha and what did you do?”

“Shut up.” I said embarrassed “everyone at school is gonna be saying shit.”

“And we’ll fight them. But for real you look thicker than a snicker got damn.”

“Jonathan.” I wined

“I mean Nat you woke up like that.” Joe said pointing at me.

“Yo most girls would kill for that like damn you got thick.” Josh muttered. “Lemme touch it.” I glared at him but inside something cluttered in my stomach

“Snickers.”

“What about them.”

“Nah that’s you.”

“Yeah all that booty thicker than a snicker.”

“Our snickers.”

“I hate all three of you.”

“No you don’t.” They responded and after that the name stuck

I walked into Joes room tossing my backpack. He chuckled knowing I wasn’t very happy.

“You ok Snickers?”

“Kinda.”

“Wanna talk about it.”

“I’m tired of being a virgin.”

“Oh. Well I mean we’re 15 we’ll you about to be I just turned 16 and I didn’t know you-“

“Bullshit you're my best friend you know I am when the hell have you seen me with a guy let alone you guys won’t let one near me.”

“Cause we hear how they talk about you we ain’t letting some asshole just date you to hit it and tell everyone. They care about all that.” He said pointing at me “and not this.” He said poking a finger into my chest where my heart was

“Will you.”

“Will I what?” He asked looking up from his game

“Take it.”

“Take what?”

“Joe really, ugh this is already weird, take my virginity.” He dropped the controller looking at me like I was crazy.

“What!?”

“Your my best friend why not.”

“Why me why not one of the twins?” He asked confused and it made me nervous maybe I shouldn’t have asked but I couldn’t ask the twins Jon plays to much and Josh, I couldn’t ask Josh even if I wanted too.

“I’m closer to you and Jon plays too much I’ll hear about this the rest of my life if I asked him and you know it and I can’t ask Josh. Joe I only trust you guys, please.”

“Why can’t you ask Josh?”

“I can’t.”

“Snickers.” He said making me look at him. “Oh shit do you like him, like like him like him.”

“Joe.” I whined blushing.

“Oh my god how did I not know and since when.””

“If you tell him I’ll slit your fucking throat.”

“I won’t but you like him.”

“Ugh yeah ok I like Josh”

“Since when?”

“A little while. So I can’t ask him.”

“Why not like wouldn’t that make you wanna ask him more.”

“No because what if he says no or is weird or it changes shit and if he says no it’ll bother me and I don’t wanna catch more feelings if I sleep with him Joe it’ll probably make me like him more and I can’t do that.”

“You sure about this?”

“I’d rather it be someone I trust and am comfortable with and your my best friend.”

“Ok.” I looked up at him shocked he’d said ok he got up as I looked at him.

“Where-“

“I’m not doing this and taking a chance of having a baby we’re kids we don’t need that I’m sure there’s a condom in this house.” Five minutes later he was back and locked his door holding up a foil pack. “Told ya.”

“Shut up.”

“You sure about this Snickers like once we do this you can’t take it back.”

“I’m not stupid I know that.”

“Look of you want I’ll see where uces heads at if he likes you too, then you can ask him.”

“No, cause then if he does I don’t wanna be clueless.”

“ like he’d care like that Snick you got as hell besides I think he’s a virgin too.”

“Joe”

“I’m just making sure, like this is a big step.”

“I’m a big girl.”.Joe gently touched my face lowering his lips to mine as he kissed me. It felt good but also felt weird. Slowly I got into it and we ended up on his bed. I moaned when he kissed around on my neck and he pulled back

“You ok?”

“Um yeah that, that felt good.” He nodded doing it again. We made out a while his hand sliding up my shirt. We slowly undressed as Joe would ask if I was ok or sure.

“Natasha.” I looked at him as he looked down my eyes following his before looking at him. Joe was handsome as hell they all were. “You sure about this?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me if I hurt you.” He kissed me slowly moving as I gasped it felt weird and kinda hurt but also felt good. “You good?” I nodded as he slid all the way as I winced in discomfort. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re good, move.” I replied touching his face.

Most girls I’d heard those first time wasn’t the best and it hurt and while yeah it hurt a little when Joe first started it wasn’t bad. It was different.”

“Wow.”

“What?” I asked.

“You, that,.”

“Joe.”

“What Snickers, ya can’t get shy now not after that.”

“I’m not your just funny.”

“You sure your ok?”

“Yeah Joe you didn’t really hurt me, I mean you got a big dick at least I’m assuming and it hurt a few seconds when you first started but no you didn’t hurt me.”

“Get up I need to change the sheets.”

“Um ok.”

“Snickers you bled a little that’s why I was so scared I hurt you.”

“Joe.” I said touching his face. “You didn’t hurt me, I don’t think you ever will Your my best friend and thank you.”

“Always, I always got you Snickers. One day we’ll make sure you never want for nothin.”

“I know you guys say that all the time.”

“Because it’s true we don’t care where you go what you do who you end up with we got you.”

“I know bear I love you guys too.”

“By the way you really are perfect.”

“Joe.”

“You are,”

JON POV

I looked at my twin like he was crazy, I kno he ain’t really just say that. No Fuckin way

“Snickers?” I asked as he nodded “Snickers our snickers? Natasha? Natasha Aiyana Smith?”

“Yes Jon, damn! Who the hell else you think I’d be talkin bout.”

“Not Natasha not our Snickers that’s for sure.” I replied. I was shocked he liked her like for real for real. “You do know Joe hooked up with her right uce?” He immediately got pissed. Face red and all but as my brother my twin I couldn’t not tell him.

“I hooked up with who?” Joe asked coming in with his bag, staying with us and thank god Snickers wasn’t with him.

“What!?” Josh said glaring out our cousin, and tossing his water. “Always.”

“Dang what I do?” He asked

“You hooked up with Natasha!”

“Um yeah like 6 months ago, she wanted me to take her virginity wanted it to be someone special that she trusted and said those options were me or one of you two.”

“Well uce, uce likes her?”

“What?” Joe asked looking at my twin who was pissed. “Since when?”

“For a while, damn why ain’t she come to me?”

“Because y’all joke too much and she quote loves Jon but ain’t trying to hear his mouth cause he’d never shut up and she didn’t wanna ask you cause she has a Fuckin crush on you and ain’t wanna be weird. Besides she’s known me longer and better she’s legit next door.”

“So y’all like dating?”

“No.” He laughed “that’s like my fucking sister.” He looked at Josh before speaking “why ain’t you say anything no one had a clue and I know she don’t. Otherwise I know she’s had asked you shit I even tried talk her into tellin you.”

“I ain’t think she’d like me like that shit uce we grew up together and now I can’t.”

“Why? She thinks we cute you know that so she probably do like you.”

“Well she ain’t gonna do anything now if she did you done hooked up with her.”

“So what we ain’t dating it didn’t work we work better as friends.if you had said something you’d have taken her virginity dumbass cause when she came to me I found out she likes you that’s why she wouldn’t ask you, she didn’t want you saying no and it being weird and she ain’t wanna catch feelings.”

“But you know Tash man hell people been sayin she fucking all us what she gonna hook up with me and then really feel that way uce. You know her she ain’t about to be what everyone says. Snickers ain’t-“

“Tell her or I will.” Joe said.

“Why she-“

“Do it Josh, trust me. She been feelin you uce.”

#main event jey uso #wwe jey uso #wwe #jey uso #the usos #jey uso fanfiction #jey uso x reader #jey uso smut #wwe roman reigns #roman reigns fanfiction #jimmy uso

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agonycrossbow · 3 months

Text

General Leon backstory headcanons

this feels so... self-indulgent and cringey now in modern-day fandom, after having dedicated so much time to arguing what is or isn't canon and having to explain multiple times, at great lengths, that the mafia backstory is not canon and why it's not. my brain is just like "shut up and just be glad that people are starting to listen to you at all."

but

● grew up in a suburb around the Hartford, CT area

● only child

● very religious/uptight Catholic mom, dad was basically Mike Cosgrove from Freakazoid

● mom was a middle school geography teacher (and CCD teacher). dad was a cop (he was bASICALLY COSGROVE)

● overall was just a pretty good kid, though. constantly on honor roll. graduated college with a 3.7 GPA.

#resident evil headcanons #leon headcanons

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dykevanny · 2 months

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idk if you’ve talked about this before but what do u think nessa’s childhood was like? bcuz there’s the whole implied daddy issues and abuse AND the fact that her dad made her make him sound better in court so he would get custody and then her mom died (is that what happened? i might be wrong i havent listened to the tapes in a while) but basically im wondering what u think her childhood was like or at least what ur interpretation of it is

SMILES :) HI

I do in fact think her father was abusive and forced her to lie abt her mom in court which lead to her suicide. I think Vanessa was raised catholic,, she was sort of an accident and ness’s mom got pregnant before she and bill were married so the two of them kinda had to . Prepare unexpectedly. Bill has mixed feelings on having a bastard daughter, but ness’s mom doesn’t really care and loves her kid so much. She’s trying her best,,

Bill has some other issues fun fact !! He presents himself as this great upstanding citizen with a wonderful life and morals, he sends his daughter to catholic school, his wife is a stay at home mom, he’s got a nice office job, you know. He’s also got a nasty drinking problem though, and takes out his anger at his self-perceived dead-end life on his wife, and rarely vanessa. Oh no :( … eventually!! Ness’s mom is like damn you know what. Just sitting in this hell marriage is not gonna protect me or my child at all I need to divorce this man . Anddddd we all know what happened then 💀 bill got full custody from flipping the entire story to make her seem like the villain- and who’s the judge gonna believe, the frantic woman or the widely-liked guy and the crying kid testifying? Anyways yeah Vanessa entirely blamed herself and thinks she killed her mom. She was the one to find the body actually. Her father only got worse and more controlling, and eventuallyyyy she split! Originally her alter called itself Vanny (which is why she doesn’t like being called that by malhare much later) and vanny was lik e . Ohhhmygod we need to get OUT of here. So after some saving up and preparing (and after a few very big fights that resulted in some nasty bruises) 15-year-old Nessie and Vanny ran away! Skipped town even. She camped out with an online friend for a while, and bounced around until finally at age 18 xe could buy xeir own shitty little apartment … and next year she got a job beta testing a video game..! So um yeah <3 the minute she got full autonomy and settled into a fairly comfy living situation everything got flipped on it’s head and she went through daddy issues THE SEQUEL with our good friend william ‘malhare’ afton .

#Vanny goes by Loche after sb. Also yes will ness and van all using ‘vanny’ did get quite confusing for all three of them #Umm..#Ask to tag lol

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topguncortez · 3 months

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Hi G, I read your post where you were talking about coming back to religion and relearning to put your trust in Him and I just wanted to say how proud I am of you.

I was hurt religiously, and I came back to God a few years later (about 2-ish years ago now) and I'm still learning to trust God again.

I don't think it's something you do once and then it just happens automatically every time afterward. I think you have to continuously give it to Him, continuously chose to trust him.

Like for me, that looks like when I listened to worship music and prayed on the way to my neurology appointment earlier this week, and my eye doctor appointment today because I was so anxious (I picked out some really cutey glasses and prescription sunglasses btw and I am so excited to get the call that I can come pick them up! It was a new office so I was so scared that I wouldn't like them, put everyone was so nice! Especially the woman who helped me pick out my glasses).

i’ve had such a weird relationship with God my whole life. I was raised catholic. i went to a Catholic school until I was in middle school. For a long time, my faith and trust in God was so important to me.

Then i was hit with some tragedies back to back and i just questioned everything. Why is He punishing me and doing this to innocent people who haven’t done anything to forsake him? I thought there was no more suffering because Jesus died on the cross?

It’s been a very slow and difficult process to put my trust in God again. I started to rebuild my faith when I was at bootcamp 6 years ago. I went through a very traumatic experience before I shipped out, and I thought I was over it… but I had a huge panic attack one day and realized “no. i’m not over it. I need to talk to someone” so i started talking to the chaplain and every since then I’ve been turning more and more to God and the chaplain for guidance on what I should do when things get rough.

Like I said, religious trauma and doubt isn’t something you get over in a couple of days or months or years even. It’s a slow process

#g mail

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soldier-poet-king · 1 year

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I love my Nonna dearly but I also just got my first real "here's how you should find a man" advice so truly 2023 IS my Charlotte Lucas year

To be fair, I'll give them credit, this is one of the first times my family has pulled this shit on me. I suppose my "I'm too busy focusing on school" excuse that I used through all 8 years of undergrad and grad school doesn't really work now that I've been working full-time for a year. And she also didn't bring it up in front of everyone or out of the blue, it came up because we had been discussing how insane my motherhas been about babies lately and my Nonna said "oh it's BC she's waiting for grandkids"

And like??? Just because my mother got married and had kids by my age (which may have been the right decision for her, this isn't judging even if I think her life went to shit bc of it) doesn't mean it's the right decision for ME

In fact, it is the ABSOLUTE WRONG decision for me. Theres a whole long list of reasons why I'm not getting married + or having children, including but not limited to: the trauma of my parents marriage and my childhood, my own ongoing health stuff, the whole religious queer anxiety guilt complex I've got going, the fact that if I were to get pregnant the resulting mental health crisis and dysphoria would undoubtedly make me *** y'know not soemthing that is frequently a source of nightmares for me or anything, my inability to take care of myself let alone CHILDREN, and the anxiety of raising children religious when I don't even know wtf is going on with me, CHILDREN??? IN THIS ECONOMY????

Ofc I can't exactly say any of this to my Nonna who, while incredibly sweet and loving and Good, is also like. Not at all exposed to these concepts and would probably freak out if I was like hello yes I am a big fat queer and I rlly hate the concept of gender and societal ideas of womanhood :) it also doesn't help that rlly the only single, middle aged woman my Nonna knows is this lady who works at the church who is DEFINITELY a badly closeted lesbian but also she's super fuckin mean and condescending and no one likes her BC she's a bitch, on top of the whole being a badly closeted lesbian in a conservative heteronormative religious environment

Like even IF I were to get licitly Catholic married to a man. You wanna find one for me??? My Nonna was like "go to church more to find a man" HELLO??? WHERE??I GO TO MASS EVERY WEEK?? Every religious man I know irl is a radtrad women can't wear pants type or is a manchild. Even if I COULD find a normal man, he'd have to get real cool about some stuff real quick. In that forever dilemma of too leftist queer for the religious and too religious for the leftist queers. (Obvs your partner doesn't have to be your duplicate but I'm like. Generally being on the same page. The same BALLPARK. is probably conducive to having a healthy relationship, y'know?)

Besides a significant part of my having 0 social life is because I am living in my parents basement which is in a shitty not-a-suburb of mostly immigrant families with youngish kids or super old folks from when the neighborhood was built, so it's poor and run down but also super fuckin far from anything To Do, so it's the WORST of both worlds of urban sprawl. And I have no car. And I already spend 2.5 hrs a day commuting for work. And I'm chronically tired. And joining a fencing club or taking art class or whatever costs MONEY y'know the thing I'm trying to SAVE by living in this hell place???? She literally said in the same convo "live here as long as possible to save money" like??? YOU CANT HAVE UR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO as long as I'm living here I'm NOT going out and meeting ppl BC there is literally Nowhere To Go. Big box stores like Walmart? Yet another strip mall? The highway??? THIS IS SOULLESS HELL of neither nature NOR accessible city amenities

And anyway, I would rather be in a long term marriage for tax benefits relationship anyway. Not platonic, not romantic, but a secret third thing (jk but also serious). Like. Mutual devotion that blurs the lines and transcends labels. It could be completely chaste. It could not be. It's not a dealbreaker really. It's about trust and devotion and companionship and love. But also I'm insane and I KNOW how insane and obsessive I sound, and society prioritizes nuclear family relationships and not the weird ass shit I crave, and I feel too much too fast and would ruin any relationship I had even if I WERE to somehow find someone who prioritizes those things too

So like. It's fine. Most days (not all ofc, but I'm trying) I'm okay with this and being on my own and learning to cultivate my own peace and Goodness and I know who I am and what I believe and what I trust to be Good and I'm working toward that and I'm not sacrificing it for anything. But also. Can you give a bitch a break. Please. I'm so fkin tired

#franposting #my bday isnt even til JUNE #im going to bitch anyway #im genuinely really upset but part of that is bc my headache has come back #and its worse than ever #i might cry but my head already hurts too much #i got really good news at work and only the men in my family made a big deal #the women were just. meh. and ofc none of them have careers so why should ot be important to me?#as the only granddaughter ofc :))))#i am going. to crawl into bed. hair washed. lavender candle on.#do a lil meal planning. and then read or maybe just sleep.#tmrws goals after church are gym and grocery shopping before dnd #have to make my body hurt so much i cant think again #ofc bro 1 has claimed the car. so maybe i cant go #god. gos. i fuckin need to get out of here #but i literally cannot afford even studio apt rent in the city #and moving to one of the boroughs doesnt gwt me any closer to anything esp without a car #literally. just like. fuckin kill me #or find me a decently paid not soul killing job in a smaller city or even a town #where i could have a garden #or a porch swing. sit in. the sunlight

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fredfilmsblog · 3 months

Photo

We got such a good reaction to last week’s “The Summoning” postcard teasing a graphic novel series that I thought it was a good bet you hadn’t read the interview with creator Elyse Castro that was done in 2017 by the Frederator development group.

frederator-studios:

Frederator Studios’ Cooper Nelson checked in with Elyse Castro, creator of “The Summoning,” the newly released GO! Cartoons short on Cartoon Hangover, to ask a few burning questions. Let’s see if her answers are equally on fire.

Elyse Castro created “The Summoning,” about Claire, a witch, and her cat Edgar, on a quest for a missing spell ingredient. When I asked her our usual opening question—“Where did you study animation?”—Elyse just chuckled.

“Can’t answer that one,” she explained, “I didn’t!”

Rebellious against the ‘usual,’ Castro, of Brisbane, Australia, is a prolific creative, with experience ranging from playwriting to comics to taxidermy—she recently gave blacksmithing a go. Below, she doles out the deets on “The Summoning,” and leads us down her windy path to cartoon-creating.

So what did you study in school?

I went to uni for theater and visual art, but halfway through got really into the culture of tattooing, and became a tattoo apprentice. My Catholic parents were horrified. I was a tattoo artist for several years, then cooled off it—partly because of a hurt wrist, partly because I was tired of people’s shit tattoo ideas.

I can imagine. So then what’d you get up to?

I was doing freelance comics, some fine art, but also studied to become a drama teacher. I was frustrated about the neglect of arts and theater education in Australia, and decided to quit harping about the problems and lend a hand to the solutions.

Do you enjoy teaching?

I love connecting with the kids. And it’s creative—I teach at an all boys school, so I often write us alternative plays to fit them better, like our own version of “Robin Hood”. It’s a lot of laughs—I love making people laugh.

Is that why you wanna make cartoons?

Oh yeah – it’s always been a big motivation for me. My biggest goal in life all through growing up, and even now, is to make my sister laugh. It isn’t too hard, she’s thinks I’m a riot. She ended up becoming a research scientist, while I’m an adult entertained by Yo Gabba Gabba.

I respect that. So then what inspired “The Summoning”?

Certainly my maniac cats [see Winston below]. And actually, a lot of experiences with my sister. Voices we’d use, stupid things we’d do. And some gross stuff. Like, the whole bit with the dandruff in “The Summoning” was based on a time that I picked a big flake of the stuff off her head. I remember it now, a nice, sunny day…

Aha, gross! Gotcha. What mattered to you while developing your own short?

I thought about what I wanted to see in a cartoon—I’m drawn to the macabre, odd stuff, like my taxidermy. I’m very crafty, always making things, which lends itself to a witch character. And tone-wise, I wanted to keep it real, even have nuggets of education. Like in “The Summoning,” I tucked in a great factoid about poo consumption in the animal kingdom.

Sounds about as educational as a Frederator show gets!

I still can’t believe I have a project with Frederator. It was my childhood dream to make a cartoon, and I’m a huge fan of Pendleton Ward and Natasha Allegri. I even got to work with Natasha, who directed “The Summoning”! I was fangirling, it was so hard to act cool.

What’re your favorite cartoons?

Definitely Daria, Ren and Stimpy, South Park, and Adventure Time.

So about the witchcraft stuff – dabble in witchcraft yourself?

Not really, but I’m very interested in paganism and witchcraft. I study it, love the history behind it. My friends and I mess around with tarot cards sometimes, but I haven’t gone farther than that… yet.

– Cooper

Watch Elyse’s “The Summoning” on Cartoon Hangover!

For the 1 year anniversary of “The Summoning” and Go! Cartoons, bumping @elysecastro‘s interview non-US fans link here!

(this was also my first interview! We’re at ~50 a year later, with video and probs audio ones too on the way. Anthology post forthcoming! ?)

– stillcooper

#The Summoning #Elyse Castro #cartoon #GO! Cartoons #interview

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imaginarylungfish · 8 months

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nothing is good or bad (or how i realized god still lives in my brain)

I grew up pretty Catholic. I don't know if my experience was extreme or not by others' standards, but to me, it felt pretty all-encompassing. My sister, mom, and I went to church every Sunday and prayed every day. I whole-heartedly believed I was born sinful, Jesus sacrificed his life for an unworthy lowlife like me, and I would go to Hell if I didn't behave in accordance with the Catholic teachings.

Looking back, it's all so absurd. How is there an imaginary man in the sky looking down at me and punishing me for being born? How did a man who lived thousands of years ago die on a cross and magically wash away the fact that I lied one day in 3rd grade? How is there a creature with horns tempting me to commit sins and lure me to a magically place with eternal fire? Like what?

It's funny because the thing that made me start to stop believing in "God" was sort of up to semantics. When my great grandpa was dying from cancer while I was in middle school, I had this prayer card from the Catholic store that said if I prayed it for 11 days straight, anything I prayed for would be granted by God. I, of course, didn't want my great grandpa to die, so I religiously prayed for those 11 days. A month later he died. I was crushed. I genuinely thought I could save him. I asked my mom why my prayers didn't work. She said it was because it wasn't God's Will. That broke my brain. What's the point of praying for something if this guy can just flip the script because that's just how he wants it? How was that fair?

Throughout high school, I still went through the motions of being Catholic (and even was confirmed), but I was skeptical. It wasn't until college that I cut ties with Catholicism and their "God" entirely.

It's been almost a decade since I've first questioned "God," yet I still have him in my brain. I thought by now, in 2023, his hold on me was gone entirely. But a conversation with my (now ex) partner nearly 6 months ago made it clear that isn't the case.

I was having trouble wrapping my mind around the fact that what I thought to be the "best" in a situation was not objective. As in, it is no better to play video games all day than to go outside on a hike. Or delving deep into yourself and healing your traumas is really no better than just letting them be. It just depends on what you value and what you need in that moment. "There is no good or bad," my partner said, "it just is."

Yes, living is just living. Good and bad mean nothing other than what an individual person thinks. This made sense in my brain, but it didn't feel like a fully solidified understanding to me. I know I still unintentionally and unnecessarily assign morality to things based on my Catholic upbringing. Sex is bad. Tattoos are bad. Eating past when you're full is bad. Not being productive is bad. But why? By whose standards? Mine or the "God" that still lives in my brain?

After this conversation, I Googled some (secular) articles to analyze my thought processes. I knew I needed to expand my perspective if I wanted to integrate this new idea of neutrality into my way of thinking.

I came across a few articles written by William L. Mace Ph.D. on Psychology Today. The first was called "There is Nothing Either Good or Bad But Thinking Makes It So." In this article, Mace was asserting that everyone believes their way of thinking is the best, but it's not. It's just a way of thinking.

He talks about how people tend to gather evidence for our own way of thinking. When people don't align with our values, "we can always console ourselves [by saying], 'I may have lost to that deceitful so-and-so, but at least I came out ahead by holding to a higher ethical standard.'"

While reading this, I couldn't help but find my own self being reflected back to me. When I interact with someone who does something that doesn't make sense with my worldview, my knee-jerk reaction is to dismiss them. I rationalize to myself that they must just be morally inferior, right? I've done more self-work than them and they must just be ignorant. But on further reflection, isn't that just my ego trying to assert itself? Isn't that just the Catholic judgement I received as a child being spit back out as my own thoughts? There is no good or bad, no superior or inferior--things just are.

But realizing that is groundless. It's scary. I think, as humans, we want retribution for wrongdoing and reward for righteousness. We want punishment for sin and exaltation for virtue. (Hmm, sounds like a good basis to start a religion...) But that's just not reality.

In another article by Mace called "The Difficulty of Accepting Reality" he talks about how cognitive dissonance plays a role in our everyday lives. When we run into something (a person, a situation, etc.) that doesn't align with our beliefs, we have a choice to disregard the facts, re-adjust our own thinking, or blame something else entirely.

For example, when you're watching a movie that's hard to follow, you do your best to piece together the plot with the clues given and come up with your own interpretation of what's going on. In the end when everything is revealed, if you realize you were wrong, you can either dig in and assert you are actually right, admit you were wrong and re-adjust to the new reality, or blame the screenwriters for not making it clear enough. And there is no right answer. It's just your choice.

I was given these choices when I first broke away from Catholicism as well. After being exposed to more secular life, I realized there were some things that did not fit with my worldview of believing in God and following Catholic beliefs. I chose to re-adjust my views instead of insisting God is real. (This did not, by any means, happen overnight--it was a multi-year process of letting go and trusting my own beliefs over the arbitrary rules of the Catholic Church. Plus, it's an ongoing process.) Coming to terms with the idea that God does not exist is viewed as a lack of faith by believers and therefore I am labeled as "bad." But in my view, I am good. I escaped.

So, does that make those who still believe in God wrong? Is anyone right? My ego wants to think so, but I guess no one wins because there are no winners and losers. It's just life.

I am coming to my own conclusion that there is no better belief or way of thinking. Sure, there are codes of ethics enacted by societies. But those aren't facts. They're just collective agreements of conduct. Nothing is inherently better than anything else. Not everyone will think this way and that feels more okay to me than earlier in my life. I feel like through learning that nothing is superior or inferior, I can start chipping away at those old, deeply held beliefs from Catholicism in my mind. I, personally, don't want them there. I don't want a "God" living in my head anymore. I want more of me and my thoughts that I've cultivated through my own work, not some scripture shoved down my throat when I was 5.

Before wrapping this up, I do want to say, yes, for me, real damage was done by growing up in the Catholic Church. However, I don't blame my parents or guardians for raising me as Catholic. Nor do I think Catholicism is all-out bad (we literally spent an entire post on trying to eradicate that black-and-white type of thinking). I believe this runs deeper than mere individual fault. I know my parents thought being raised Catholic would be good for me and my sister. Even though I didn't ask for any of these negative consequences of my upbringing, here they are, and I want to do something about them, so I am not controlled by them any longer.

I want to internalize the belief that life is just life. Things are just things. There is no good or bad, no superior or inferior. There isn't much rhyme or reason to the events in my life or anyone else's. I am the one who can assign meaning to things. I don't want to follow an external set of rules, much less ones made by institutions that feed off of shame, fear, and ignorance.

If you agree or disagree or just want to see where this takes me, stick around. Thank you for your curiosity about my inner thoughts and reading this far.

-L

resources that have helped me process my Catholic trauma:

Leaving the Fold by Marlene Winell: this really opened my eyes to the distorted reality the Catholic Church puts forth as "truth"

Ex-Catholic Subreddit: it's reddit, so keep your expectations low. but there are some solid posts on there that help me remember it's okay that i'm still struggling and i am not alone. plus, the "sheep no more" motto makes me smile.

We're Having Gay Sex podcast: this has helped me learn sex and pleasure, especially queer sex and pleasure, is not wrong and is okay to talk about

Queer Sex Therapy: this has also helped me normalize queer sex and queer joy

exvangelical and non-religious friends: honestly, just talking with others who have been through the same shit as you have or see how ludicrous what you learned as a child was is super affirming

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bloobluebloo · 9 months

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A little personal background story from yours truly about 9/11 under the cut

Thinking back on the post I reblogged, it reminds me of why OoT became such a formative experience for me, because I had played it in the aftermath of 9/11. I was 11 at the time, and had already been subjected to some harrowing experiences that really made me feel othered. To give just one example, at the time I was going to a school that was probably 95% white, most of the kids being Italian Catholics. I am Italian on my mom's side, but I took so much after my dad's looks that for all intents and purposes I looked like and was treated as a brown kid. That alone was enough to fuck with me for years because I felt like I was being rejected by my own kind. It wasn't necessarily that I had no friends; I did have friends, I was the weird nerdy kid that went off the rails on my interests. However, I was never considered one of *them*, and for the people that bullied me they often bullied me because of stupid things like *smelling* like curry which had me so paranoid I was locking my clothes in the closet, and having a weird sounding family name that no one could pronounce properly. Just for added context, my grandfather was friends with the school principal who was an old Italian lady and knew many of these kids' grandparents as well, and yet I was still rejected and treated as the brown kid. Post 9/11, my French teacher, in front of the whole class, points to me and the other Arab kid in my class and asks if it's true that our religion mandates killing disbelievers, that if men die in that line of duty they will get 72 virgins in heaven. I remember that other kid looking at me as if I was supposed to know the answer and needless to say, that damaged my sense of belonging even more because everyone was just *staring* and well...yeah. ANYWAYS, playing OoT at a time where it felt like the whole world was trying to villainize me for things that were completely out of my control and then seeing the Gerudo, how their world villainized them, how at the time their emblem was so similar to the one used by my religion, how the Gerudo's goddess was seen as evil really just had me going "Oh, you guys too huh. You girls seem pretty alright. Maybe your king isn't as bad as this game is trying to tell me he is. I'm not as bad as the world is telling me I am. " Ganondorf, for all his villainy, became like a hero in my eyes. I think, had I played OoT at any other point in my life it would have not affected me as deeply as it had at that point.

Of course this is one of the many, many things that I continued to suffer post 9/11, but ya know. I often see Ganondorf stans are people who have suffered deep pain in their lives and I can understand that so much. I always admired Ganondorf because he had the balls to not accept being told he was inferior to others, that he fought back and seized what he believed was his right to have, that he refused to bow, and I always carried that with me until slowly I became that person that didn't accept shit from others and began to live my life the way I wished and made my place in this world.

#its late and im taking a not so nice trip down memory lane #but good things did come out of it #ruminating and writing this out felt cathartic #might delete later #we'll see #admiral's log

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