#also shannon I didn't tag you for that opinion on purpose

[exhuastedpigeon]

hiii, i just saw your tags on a post about catholicism and I know you watch 911, so i was wondering if you wouldn't mind sharing your thoughts on how you'd like to see 911 handle the whole Eddie is a lapsed catholic and has catholic guilt and is now dating a former almost-nun. do you think eddie's going to have a moment of "oh, actually i want to do mass and confessions again because thanks to my lovely girlfriend marisol, ive found my faith again"?

ANON I AM SO GLAD YOU ASKED! I'm going to put some of my own experiences under the cut at the end of this ask because I think the context is at least a little important.

I think someone like @monsterrae1 will also have a ton of insight into this as another recovering Catholic and as someone from a Latin Catholic background that's probably similar to Eddie's.

Now to my take:

When they brought in Marisol's backstory of being a novice nun I laughed so hard I fell out of my chair and then I got really excited because bringing religion into Eddie's story is, in my opinion, the most obvious path for Eddie's queer awakening and an arc where Eddie unpacks a lot of his catholic guilt and repression.

If Eddie goes back to Church, which I think he might based on Bobby's advice not because of Marisol, I don't think it's going to be a 'oh wow I missed this!' moment, I think it would be the start of a journey where Eddie realizes how impacted he is by Catholic guilt and how even if he hasn't gone to church in years, it's impacted so many aspects of his life.

Eddie saying he's a manchurian catholic and has a reservoir of catholic guilt he didn't realize was there was so funny to me because that man doesn't even realize how his catholic guilt has impacted his life. Every time he ignores his own feelings for other people. every time he tries to do what he thinks people want of him instead of what he wants. every time he shoved down his feelings to 'do what's right' that's catholic guilt, baby.

My personal feelings on it are that Eddie is going to realize that he's been repressing a lot about himself... like maybe his sexuality. He's been comphet coded for years. From the panic attack of Ana being called his wife to saying dating feels like a performance to what he said last episode about the church being a big reason he and Shannon got married. (This isn't to say he didn't love Shannon because he did, we know how much he did even after their relationship was dead in the water).

I think we'll probably get an Eddie/Marisol breakup in the next few episodes - likely triggered by Eddie realizing he's maybe not straight and maybe he needs to figure himself out. Or maybe because he still can't get it up around her because of the nun reveal. Or maybe for some other reason - like maybe Marisol is a little homophobic.

They're setting up a perfect 'queer repressed Eddie' arc. They've set it up since before the move to ABC, even if they didn't do it on purpose.

I don't think it's going to be an easy journey for Eddie though. He's probably go so much internalized homophobia inside of him. He's got so much to unlearn and so much he needs to learn to love about himself. That's one of the reasons I hope Tommy sticks around - he's someone Eddie could lean on and learn from because he came out later in like - he came from a similar background with the military - he's someone Eddie could trust with that.

Now, a little backstory on my own relationship with Catholicism before I dive in - I was raised very Catholic, church every Sunday, Catholic school (uniform and all) from kindergarten all the way to high school, I was confirmed, I was my sister's confirmation sponsor, I was an alter server, I was a lead in my high school's church choir.

But my Catholic background is also not the exact same as Eddie's. He specified he comes from Latin Catholics and that's an important distinction because different cultures have a different approach to Catholicism. I'm originally from the states and while I'm not Irish-American or Italian-American but, I was raised in a very Irish and Italian neighbourhood (lots of first and second gen immigrant folks) and have probably a more 'Irish-American/Italian-American Catholic' perspective.

I am not practicing anymore and have gone to so much therapy for what my therapist calls 'religious trauma' because Catholicism, my teachers, and some of my priests, made me hate myself for existing even before I knew why I hated myself. Catholicism and the way they speak about queer people and the way they speak about sex is extremely regressive and when you learn about it from a very young age, you internalize that.

I also experience guilt when I do basically anything for myself that isn't beneficial to other people. You're made to feel selfish for having needs. I just... don't like organized religion because of my experience with the church.

I spent like 21 years hating myself and feeling tremendous guilt about my feelings towards women and every time I would kiss a girl I would play if off as 'oh haha it's just for laughs' because Catholic. One of my best friends in university once said to me, "I'm gay, but I'm catholic so I'm straight". He's now married to a woman and has a kid and every time I see him he looks worse and sadder. He struggles with addiction, likely because he's trying to numb himself. I think any religion that makes someone feel that way is toxic.

#asked and answered #eddie diaz #catholic guilt

[bookofmirth]

“i have an unpopular opinion re: Amren on this” 👀 i would like to see it.gif

mmmm okay haha @aelin-godkiller @princessofmerchants-reads

idk if this is *actually* an  unpopular opinion because I haven’t seen that much discussion about her and I know that in bookclub our main thought was “wow, Amren is being a bitch”. That’s the extent of what I know people think.

But while yes, I think she was a complete bitch, I think that it made sense for who Amren is and she served a good counterpoint to other’s reactions to Nesta’s self-destruction. So in context, she was super interesting because she was a good example of how during self-destruction, you can push people too far and actually cause irreparable harm to relationships. There are plenty of relationships, romantic and otherwise, that don’t make it out of these situations intact.

I was chatting with some other people and someone said that she doesn’t like how the fae come across as contemporary humans, like people you could bump into on the street. And Amren is the complete opposite of that. Amren is the most other-worldly of all the characters we know. Partly because it’s literally true, but besides characters who are straight up not human-like (Bryaxis, the Suriel) Amren is the most reminiscent of a different time and place.  

Amren has always been not *quite* like everyone else. She has no patience and lost all her fucks probably 10k years ago. Any scene where the IC is together, she is calling the characters boy, or girl, she’s always more aloof, she thinks being Rhys’s second is “interesting” because she had never done it before. She holds herself always just a bit separate from everyone else, like she’s watching them from a distance. Judging. Proportionally, she’s like an 80 year old who hangs out exclusively with 5 year olds and infants. She has a completely different set of values and acts accordingly. Her eyeballs roll out of their sockets on a regular basis.

I think that Nesta probably appreciated that Amren is like that. Amren did not care about Nesta’s trauma in the way that everyone else did. Everyone else would treat Nesta with kid gloves or would hold all of her past mistakes against her. But then comes Amren, who does not gaf, who has seen it all, and Nesta felt like she could be herself and open because she knew that Amren would just laugh and say it was nbd and hand me the bottle of wine.

But Nesta wasn’t ready to do that with anyone else, and Amren saw that that wasn’t tenable, and so she probably said “hey, you can’t keep doing this, go make friends your own age and fix this”, and Nesta wasn’t ready to hear it. I headcanoned before acosf came out that their fight probably happened because they are honest with each other, but that Nesta wasn’t yet able to be honest with herself, or at least to deal with the harmful things she knew she was doing. Whereas Amren has probably seen this same story play out a thousand times and though Nesta is a unique individual with specific experiences, Amren still was internally like “omg this again, please deal with your problems, mortal”.

So anyway, during the intervention scene, Amren is a good counterpoint to Feyre. Feyre is barely able to hold it together. You get all these details from Cassian that Feyre is struggling. She didn’t want it to come to that. Feyre was waiting, and hoping, and wishing that Nesta would come around. Trying to figure out how to be supportive while not enabling. This is not me saying “oh poor Feyre”, but just saying here is one way that people were impacted by Nesta’s actions. 

Amren is an example of basically the opposite of that. Whereas Feyre is deeply tied to Nesta’s wellbeing, Amren is meh about it. She has very little stake, she isn’t that invested in her friendship with Nesta, and she has very little tolerance for BS.

Another way to view it is that Amren has faith that Nesta will have the strength to persevere and come around. She feels that no matter what she (Amren) says, Nesta will come out the other side healthier and happier and they will be able to go back to chatting shit. Amren just doesn’t feel like she needs to support it in the meantime. Maybe that’s a generous interpretation of Amren’s behavior, but *shrug* given that Amren understood the power that Nesta was trying to grapple with and that she recognized Nesta’s tenacity, to me it’s a possibility.

Also, the whole not telling Nesta about her powers thing was jacked up but Amren is the least sentimental person in the books. She looks at everything from a practical perspective. She will 100% make decisions based on what is best for the largest amount of people, personal relationships be damned. And at that point, I don’t blame anyone for being unsure of where Nesta stood? Elain went to see her and got ripped into? Also High Lords are notoriously power-hungry, so it’s not surprising that even if Rhys trusted her with making objects, any other lord who heard about it would inevitably cause problems. (This was a thing with Eris, yes?)

Some problems I have are:

1) Amren should not have been at the intervention. She couldn’t keep her mouth shut and she just made things worse. She had very little at stake in Nesta’s recovery and I’m no expert on interventions but I would think that it should be people who like.... care?? Speaking of which, why wasn’t Elain there. Anyway.

2) The apology felt like something that Amren would want, but not something Nesta would naturally do. The reconciliation between Nesta and Feyre felt more organic for who they are. Not so with Nesta and Amren.

tl;dr yes Amren was a bitch, but I understand why and it made a lot of sense for who she is as a character and her behavior served as a good contrast to show how someone might react if they aren’t feeling as forgiving as Feyre and Cassian were.

#acosf #acosf spoilers #spoilers #nesta #amren #ask #I am so tired #migraine wiped me out today #hope this makes sense #also shannon I didn't tag you for that opinion on purpose #don't want to share things without you knowing #anon