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timemachineyeah · 5 months

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I really, really need you to elaborate on this note you left on a post. I'm fascinated.

If you don't I'm sure I'll survive but this is an absolutely intriguing concept.

Whoooo, yeah, let's talk about Mormon theology and cosmology!!!

In response to me saying that this is basically Mormon theology, because it absolutely is

(I swear, being raised Mormon, and especially the studious and serious kind, and then leaving the church is like that bit in the first episode of The Office where they think they might be getting shut down and Jim says something like, "I know so much about paper. What I am supposed to do with all this knowledge if I don't work here any more." Like I never got very far in The Office, but I think about that feeling all the time.)

From the book of Mormon, 2nd Nephi Chapter 2:

22 And now, behold, if Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen, but he would have remained in the garden of Eden. And all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end. 23 And they would have had no children; wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin. 24 But behold, all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things. 25 Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy.

Also worth noting that Mormons are so opposed to original sin that it's actually the second of the 13 Articles of Faith, which I had to memorize in grade school. The only article that comes before it is the one saying we believe in God, Jesus, and The Holy Ghost.

"2 We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression."

And stealing from the church's official current website on the topic

President Joseph Fielding Smith (1876–1972) said: “I never speak of the part Eve took in this fall as a sin, nor do I accuse Adam of a sin. … This was a transgression of the law, but not a sin … for it was something that Adam and Eve had to do!”

Adam's fall is considered an unequivocal good to Mormons. So this whole take on theology taps into two very import Mormon principles.

The first is "agency", "free agency", or "free will". This basically boils down to: you can't grow, your actions can't matter, if you don't have a choice. The ability to choose is power, and we are here specifically to experience that freedom and to learn how to use it.

This was actually the basis of a premortal war (don't ask how folks without bodies who can't die do a war, I've no idea) between Lucifer and Jesus, because Lucifer wanted to guarantee everyone's salvation by eliminating the ability to choose wrong. The losing side was cast out of heaven and that's where Satan and demons come from!

Here have a musical number about from a VHS I used to watch constantly (in case the link malfunctions, relevant song starts at 10:55)

youtube

The second is, "opposition". Basically, things can only exist in contrast. You can only truly recognize something in comparison to something else. Ergo, a world without suffering or sin is also a world without joy or virtue. It is a nothing world. Here, a worse song from the same musical! (starts at 8:57)

youtube

By this principle, the Garden of Eden, while wonderful from the outside in retrospect, was not wonderful from within, because Adam and Eve had no frame of reference for it. To them it was just Existence, and as an existence was fairly bland.

Another thing to understand here is that Mormons believe in a premortal existence. We are all, spiritually, as ancient as God is. We've all always existed. Another Mormon principle is one of "Eternal Progress" - the idea that we are always on a journey to improve, and are capable of improving to even the state of Heavenly Father.

I remember asking once if Heavenly Father was done progressing, and told we can't possibly know, but it's possible that even He has more progress to make. But if so, we can't possibly comprehend what he is progressing towards and it's not relevant to us now.

It's important to realize that "As man is, God once was. As God is, man might become" is, like, central to Mormon theology. We aren't lesser things than God, just not as far progressed. He's among the first caterpillars to figure out how to make a chrysalis and become a butterfly and he's trying to show us how to do the same.

Regardless, a necessary step to this progress, to growth, is to live a mortal physical life in a body. A body is so important that Mormons believe at the second coming everyone who ever lived will be resurrected into "perfect" eternal immortal bodies. (This ALL creates MANY logistical and theological problems but we don't have time for all that!)

Other necessary steps include compulsive heterosexuality, marriage, and having children. Because of course.

But if God's power is not innate, but rather something he has gained by being Perfectly Good And Noble - which is like the Force or something - then he isn't truly omnipotent. He is so powerful and omniscient that to us mere mortals the distinction is meaningless, but God cannot endorse harm or cruelty without potentially losing his Godhood. Godhood is conditional upon good behavior. Morality is a natural force in the universe that can be utilized, but! See above about opposition! And free will! To utilize it, you have to be capable of knowingly being bad and choose good anyway!

This puts God in kind of a bind when it comes to guiding humanity.

He needs people to have knowledge of good and evil, but if he gives it to them directly, he'd kinda be doing a bad thing? Like, he'd be causing suffering to just force knowledge of good and evil upon us. The suffering can't be something inflicted upon humanity, it has to be a product of human choice. And choice is essential, but to learn to make choices, first you must be presented with simple ones.

Like Adam and Eve are immortal, physical, useless baby adults who cannot progress. They need to progress, and they also need to get to boning or else all the other spirit children waiting in heaven to be born will not have bodies.

So God sets up a little trap. A little trick. Just a fun little -just a fun little game.

He puts a tree in the garden and he's like, "Just leaving this over here. Don't touch it. But it's right here. See it? Right here. Just making sure you saw it. Yeah, don't touch it. In fact, two commandments for you.

Go have kids

Don't eat that fruit"

And Adam and Eve are like, "cool, great, awesome."

And God is like, really loudly in front of Lucifer/The Snake like, "Oh noooooooo. I sure hope they don't eat from this treeeeee. That would be terrrrrrible! They'd learn about SIN and BECOME MORTAL." and Satan is like "tehehehe I have a great idea!"

Meanwhile Eve, who is currently a metaphysical biological immortal, does not know what sex is and has no sex drive. She's like, "Sooooo? The kids part? How that?"

And the snake is like "You can find out, but you gotta eat this fruit" (true! this is Eden, it is still free from sin. The snake cannot lie here, yet. Because folk Mormon theology - Satan can't lie! That's a fun fact about him. He twists and manipulates truths, but lying is a Mortal gift we got from the whole Fruit thing that Eve is about to do)

And Eve is like, "Yeah, sure, I want babies. God told me to have them so...." and eats the fruit exactly as God intended her to, tempted by the snake exactly as God planned. And she was like, "Oh! I WANNA BONE ADAM. ADAM EAT THIS SO YOU KNOW WHAT BONING IS SO I CAN BONE YOU."

But then they were materially and metaphysically changed, so they couldn't stay in the Garden anymore. Less about casting out, more about God having to follow the Moral Metaphysical Laws that give him his power.

I was even taught it's not even that childbirth/periods/menstrual pain were punishments from God. They are just natural results of sexual reproduction and the part where God says that's gonna happen now isn't him giving Eve a curse, just kinda God giving Eve some sex ed. Since she'll need it.

Basically, God couldn't tell Adam and Eve to eat the fruit, and in fact was morally obligated to tell them not to, because doing so would cause suffering and death. But the suffering and death aren't a punishment from God, they're just facts about the world that become real when you know about them, but you have to know about them and experience them in order to know and experience good things also, and become closer to being a god yourself, and God wanted us to have good things, so he wanted us to eat that fruit. Which is why he put it there.

So very much like leaving water out for a cat who thinks they're being naughty but actually you just want your cat to be hydrated.

Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles observed: “This suggested contrast between a sin and a transgression reminds us of the careful wording in the second article of faith: ‘We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression’ (emphasis added). It also echoes a familiar distinction in the law. Some acts, like murder, are crimes because they are inherently wrong. Other acts, like operating without a license, are crimes only because they are legally prohibited. Under these distinctions, the act that produced the Fall was not a sin—inherently wrong—but a transgression—wrong because it was formally prohibited. These words are not always used to denote something different, but this distinction seems meaningful in the circumstances of the Fall.”

And before any baby Mormons come in here like, "nuh uh!" about any part of this, your "eternal truths" have been so watered down in the past several decades by leadership trying to seem mainstream and cling to hemorrhaging membership. Y'all don't even know your theology anymore half the time, and what's worse is it's just as toxic as ever but like 200% less interesting. I like Mormonism better when they're proudly declaring Bigfoot is Cain and talking about how John the Beloved already has an immortal body and has been wandering the world for 2000 years and confidently claiming he was the stranger who helped them fix a tire that one time.

#timemachine wuz here #mormon

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applesontheground · 4 months

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quiet coyote ⛓️

CHAPTER ONE take me far from here | AO3

hey, joy ride fans. pspspsps. so, like any other big scary slasher that’s Like This, i immediately developed a crush. one could even say it hit me like a truck (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-4-gLlF0uw). so, i’m writing about it. rather, i’m planning an entire multi-chapter thing about it and about him... and i’m making it extremely self-indulgent while on the way. this is a bit of a “for myself” project, but you guys are more than welcome to read, too! ♡

SFW | Word Count: 2,367 | Rusty Nail x Female Reader

contains canon typical/incoming cringe 2000s protagonists, dk if this needs a warning but casual misogyny + slut shaming is brought up quite a bit!

continued in making me feel like i’m guilty

🎼: x

Dawn on a motel, the dirt not kicked up and the mirages still fast asleep in the sand. Without neighbors for miles, the evenings were mostly silent lest a group travel through late in the night, coming to an oasis of air conditioning and leg room for a reprieve before heading back out to where they needed to be.

“Why are we out here again?” A boy asked, squinting up at the Sun. “Buttfuck, Nevada… Desert on one side of the road, brothels and shitty motels on the other.” He gestured to the small stop they had stayed, now in the process of being put behind him in the poorly paved parking lot. “What a cool place to spend the one break we get before finals season comes and fucks us over.”

The other guy scoffed, almost offended but still waking up and unable to commit to a strong emotion. “I told you why we were out here. Vegas is like, forty minutes away.”

“No it isn’t,” From the other side of the car, one of the girls in his group shouted over the hood of their car, looking down at a map in her hands. “It’s more like four hours, dipshit. Stop trying to talk us into it.”

Standing with her was another girl, one who was bothered with a hangnail on her hand. The third one was crouched low to the asphalt, watching a beetle to pass the time as they finished checking out, also too groggy to engage with the world just yet.

“Earth to [Y/N], come on. Don’t tell me you were watching a fucking bug while I was giving the directions.”

Looking up, you were taken from your trance by the insect making its way under your car. You sighed as you stood, twinging your expression at one of the guys who had teased and asked, “Well, what else did you want me doing? We were waiting for you guys to go return the room keys and stop talking about Vegas.”

“He wants to go to Vegas,” Natalie muttered under her breath from where she had been fixed to the map. Heather stopped picking at her hand and muttered, “Yeah, no way in Hell I’m sitting in the car for that trip.”

You nodded briefly and shrugged, “I’m sorry the getaway’s been kind of a bust. Sucks when it’s all we got in the Southwest that isn’t balls hot or Mormon country.”

“I’d take Mormon country over sharing the hotel room with these two,” Heather added, making both you and Natalie hide smiles and halfhearted snickers. She then saw Mel approach sheepishly, giving her a look of disbelief.

She scoffed at him, leaning in to meet his lips. “Fine, sharing with Dean. You’re alright.” He sighed in relief to her, genuine in tone, “Great, I’m good with being alright.” He was hugging her around the waist as she hummed another laugh.

As the Sun stopped gracing the yellow hills on the horizon, taking to the sky for another blistering day in the state, you finally did enough soaking in it to start helping throw everyone’s luggage back into the car for another trek, half in the direction of home and half in the direction of wherever looked fascinating.

“Want to find that Clown Museum,” Mel, the other guy that was along for the ride, said to you as he helped you shove a suitcase against the aged carpet in your car’s trunk, “Think it’s closer than anything else worth the time.”

“Nah, son.” Dean then piped up from where he had been tunneled into the backseat, shaking his head at him, “We aren’t fucking with that demon shit.”

“Vegas, the blow and hookers capital of the world, is in Dean’s safe square, “ Mel retorted, standing straighter and shaking his head, “But the supernatural’s where the line is drawn?”

“Ghosts don’t suck my dick.” Dean joked, sure to smack the guy on the back of the head as he walked back towards the hotel room. “I don’t blame them,” You grumbled to yourself, making Mel break into his own laughter and Dean to call back, “What was that, [Y/N]?”

“Don’t worry about it.” You ended the conversation before it even had legs to stand on, giving one more look over the contents of the trunk before slamming its door down on top.

“Hey, why’d you close up?” Dean smacked his hand on the trunk, giving you a befuddled frown from behind square-shaped sunglasses, “There was room for another bag in there.”

“It can sit in the backseat,” Natalie groaned, “Come on, dude. I want to get out of here. It’s [Y/N]’s car, anyways. Maybe we should trust her judgement when she says enough is enough.” You gave her a thoughtful glance as Dean made a jerk-off motion but instead headed for the backseat with the last backpack.

“Where’d you get this, anyways?” Heather asked, “It looks like a classic, nothing like the clunkers that putt around campus.” You turned, admiring the smooth navy blue paint under where you were leaning against the passenger door, “Hand-me-down from an uncle. He heard I was looking for a decent car when leaving for college, so we made some shit happen and sold it to me…partially under the promise that I take care of it, of course.” You crossed your arms, smiling as Natalie complimented, “It’s one of the cleanest cars I’ve ever gotten in with classmates, that’s for sure.”

“I hold myself to my word,” You commented, peeling off when you heard the horn suddenly honk, shattering the pristine silence of the badlands surrounding you and your classmates. Seeing those shades in the windshield, you snapped your fingers and pointed at Dean.

“Aht!” You barked at him, “Out of the front seat, asshole. I told you I’m the only one driving this car.”

“Nice honkers,” He pointed to the wheel while getting out, making Natalie jeer at him as he snickered, “Should let me take it for a spin some time.” He wasn’t even worth the insults, merely rolling your eyes before ushering him out of the way of the open door to the driver’s seat and putting your own sunglasses on.

“All I’m saying, [Y/N], is that you should really be more focused on Spring breaking.”

You gave Dean a disinterested glance from the rearview, hands mutely flexing on the wheel in reply. It was all he was getting out of you.

“Oh yeah, enjoy the break in the middle of-“Natalie threw a hand to the windshield, presenting the empty landscape bowled in by orange mountains. You found it rather peaceful, something scenic enough for your taste to appreciate with a flick of your eyebrows, but Mel scoffed in agreement. “Fair, I kind of wish I brought a book or something now.”

“I’m telling you guys; Vegas is our oasis from this honky tonk.” Dean insisted, and Heather groaned, “Not this whole deal again.”

“Hear him out, maybe we can watch him get drunk and catch Syphilis.” Natalie sneered, and you held your breath with straight lips as Dean blew up, “Oh, fuck off, Nat. If anyone knows about STD’s, it’d be the one who blew half the baseball team.” She gave him a ghastly glare from the passenger seat, manicured nails combing the worn leather behind her shoulder.

“Is there something wrong with that?” You asked, and Dean gawked in a mockery at you. “Uhh, maybe. She’s a fucking slut for anyone on campus, sounds pretty wrong to me.”

Mel and Heather sat further back in their seats as Natalie retorted, “Yeah, no. I might like to sleep with athletes, but I don’t take that shit from someone like you.” She turned back around with a sassy thump against the back of her seat, “You and your stupid radio show that feeds off school drama like vultures.”

“The TMZ of college reporting,” You mumbled under your breath, and Dean belted out, “Oh, boo hoo! I still get more clicks than your articles, Walter Schlong-kite. Because all you want to write about is…Oh man, I wish I knew!”

He hung his wrist off the side of your seat, making your entire body press closer to the car door as he asked practically in your ear, “What is this groundbreaking story you’re choosing over hanging out with your friends, anyways?” You wrinkled your nose at him, but slowly replied, “It’s about truck driving.”

Silence overtook you again as he started laughing, giving him one more wary glower through the mirror when he slapped the roof of the car in his charades. Luckily, the turn leading into the lunch stop you were all thinking on was coming up, so you just let it go and turned off the long trail.

You had maybe sat for ten minutes before wanting to get up and get some interviews. You were coyly eyeing the crowd, finding the types that you felt may fit the bill for what you wanted to share in your article. Their conversations, the second they touched the side of a Peterbilt or a Lowboy, made you zero in. It wasn’t a lie: you were doing a story about the truck driving industry. The desert wasn’t a total bust, considering it fell into a good route between big cities. You sometimes had to cross it to and from California, Vegas was right there, and opportunities of the sort.

Still, it wasn’t great company despite keeping an open mind. You knew your friends were all watching in bemusement as you hopped from booth to booth, even coasting the diner’s counter with your notebook in hand and eyes alight. “Hi, I’m a student reporter wanting to get the perspectives from truck drivers. Would you care to give an interview?” The interest wasn’t exactly brimming, let alone willing to shell their two cents. Even the guys you did speak with weren’t much for good quotes. Still, you kept the polite smile on your face, and scribbled down whatever you could for good measure.

“You know, if you weren’t a girl, you would’ve gotten smacked by a few of those guys.” Mel teased as you retreated to the booth, seeing the soda you had ordered sweating harder than you were while running around a diner in midday heat. Sliding back into your seat, you replied, “Why would you say that, Mel?” He seemed lost, and you clarified, “Why do you think these guys are all rough and tumble, that they’d kick the shit out of anyone who looks at them twice?”

He stammered, and Heather put her hand on the top of his and sighed, “[Y/N], you know that we’re just kidding.” You hummed, and still went on, “Well, that’s honestly why I’m writing this. The job’s not all fighting, anger…gross sex in restrooms. Don’t think I’ll be going there unless I have to, though.” Dean snorted, and you once again corrected, “Jesus Christ, I mean I’m not going there in my article. I’m not that interested in the story.”

“It’d be a good one that’d actually get an audience, though,” Dean’s hands fanned up as he swooned, “Truck Stop Restrooms: Just How Many Glory Holes Does It Take?” Natalie covered her mouth, but you rolled your eyes and groaned, “Very classy. You should take that idea for your work, Dean.”

“I think you should be here to have fun over anything else, [Y/N].” Mel suggested, and you gave him a level stare, “Really, you’re not even started on this story and you’re already acting like you’re handcuffed to it.”

“It’s an important idea. I mean, you heard yourself.” You gestured at him, “This sorta job keeps shelves stocked, and all you got to ask about it is which stall I’m going to get blown in, or who’s shanking me afterwards.” Dean scoffed again, “What, like driving in a straight line for nine hours a day is hard? I’d want to kill someone, too.”

You turned to him, finally giving him that sweet reaction in the form of a face to face answer, almost brushing noses with him. “You really think it’s easy?” You looked out the window, seeing a line of parked vehicles almost taller than the building itself as you murmured, “Look at how big their trucks are…How heavy they must be, all that?”

“Well, to you, maybe. You know women and driving don’t mix.” Dean commented. You whipped around, giving him a disgusted sneer before Heather piped up, “Oh, are you really playing that card?”

“What did you expect from the guy who thinks going to Vegas is any indication of getting laid?” Natalie added, throwing a sugar packet at him. You once again swallowed the venom in your mouth, turning to the window again while Mel also sat back, getting a strawful of water and avoiding eye contact with any of the girls at the table.

Smart guy, you mused to yourself.

The rest of lunch went without a hitch, you paid, then walked back out to your car. You took advantage of a couple men eyeing your car as you walked out to speak with them, chat up your vehicle while also getting some interest in your story. Lucky for you, they were both drivers. Heather and Mel did a good job of keeping Dean’s mouth shut, pushing him into the car while you talked on the outside.

One of the men even asked for your info, and you shared the website that your school let you publish on graciously. “Very nice,” He commented, “I’ll be keepin’ an eye out for it, little lady.” Beaming, you replied, “Thanks for the kind words, I really appreciated your perspectives.”

“Look at that, you got some story after all.” Natalie grinned as you got into the car, setting your notebook down at her feet and nodding. “Yep, they knew I had some interest in truck driving.”

“Why? How’d they know? From your car?” Mel asked. You sat back upright in your seat, elbow brushing the cord of the speaking device to a HAM radio that was fastened on the front panel of the car.

You shrugged, and hummed, “Must’ve heard me in the diner, I guess.”

#rusty nail x reader #slasher x reader #quiet coyote #✏️#⛓️

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stackslip · 4 months

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Do you have any book recs on mormons and cults? I wanna know more about them for a school presention and I think you mentioned that they're your special interest a while ago, but I'm not sure. If you have any other media recs on them, that would be helpful too. Sorry in advance if I got you mixed up with another user, just ignore this if I did

yeah you got me there i am indeed the person who has a special interest in mormons for some fucking reason. anyhow.

my entry point to learning about them was actually the podcast mormon stories, who mostly do interviews with ex members or people who are a lot more nuanced today and went through a faith crisis. it's accessible to nevermos (aka people who were never mormon) and while it has its issues (the hosts being insufferably liberal for one) there are some genuinely great in-depth interviews from people from all walks of life who talk about being raised in the faith or converting, missions, gender roles and the construction of the mormon family, practices and other issues. many of them express that they believe mormonism to be a cult, some are more hesitant to do so--but they make compelling arguments that it's at least a high control group that has a high exit cost--in terms of family and friends cutting or icing you out, in terms of general support, in terms of how much it shapes your worldview and how difficult it is to even consider leaving, even when staying is actively harmful.

the podcast also hosts a series called LDS discussions which focuses on mormon truth claims--about the veracity of the book of mormon, historical developments in the mormon church (including polygamy and joseph smith), racism in the church, and more. however they're long and also i think you need a certain amount of familiarity with the subject--the goal of the series is mainly to reach out to members of the LDS church and try to give them information they might have been deprived from, since the church actively hides or partially obscures information about things such as polygamy or the construction of the book of mormon. this would be a bit too long to look into for a class tbh, so instead i'm gonna give you other resources and this is just if you ever wanna dig more into the subject.

the podcast unfinished: short creek is specifically about the flds cult--fundamentalist polygamists who are known bc their prophet warren jeffs was arrested for child sexual abuse. the podcast focuses on the history of the cult, including its origins in mainstream mormonism and how it's at odds with the lds church today, as well as how current members try to continue living their faith in increasingly restrictive conditions and while having to live in the same town as "apostates", ex members who either left voluntarily or were forced out of the flds but decided to stay in the city. it's a genuinely fantastic and compassionate podcast series which tbh is a good way to segway into the history of the modern LDS church and if you're interested in cults, compare and contrast this to the church.

in terms of books, here are a few that are definitely more accessible and digestable than these long podcasts. keep in mind in terms of sources you might be looking for that mormons have a long tradition of publishing their own histories on the subject (and sometimes doing semi decent to pretty good academic work, although the latter tends to be reprimanded by the church if it strays too far out of bounds) and that there's also a huge anti-mormon evangelical movement who will post a lot of true shit mixed with bullshit about the lds church not bc they're worried about its actual issues, but because they believe mormons are fake christians they need to save.

a bit of a pop book, but really fascinating entry into the subject of the mormon church and its culture past and present is the book under the banner of heaven by jon krakauer. it's a comparison to the origins of the LDS church in the 19th century and a murder that took place in the 80s by a splinter group of mormons who claimed to have rediscovered the true church. please do not watch the tv series.

if you want more "academic" stuff, the book mormon america by joan and richard ostling is a general decent overview of the history of the church, its theology and its practices by the early 21st century (keep in mind its practices are evolving and some aspects are outdated) and some of its main issues and demography. i think it tries a bit too hard to be "neutral" at times and it's written by christians who are sympathetic to (white, middle class) mormons and try to portray them to their fellow (white, middle class) christians in a more sympathetic light, but it's good in terms of giving some basic facts to non-mormons who might be confused about the basic theology and what makes mormons so different from Regular Christians

if you want more on the early history of the church, the book no man knows my history by fawn brodie, if you can get your hands on it, is one of the first real and non LDS church approved biographies of joseph smith, founder and key figure of the church.

unfortunately i haven't found any decent biography of brigham young yet--which is a shame because the dude is a way more fascinating figure than joseph imo, and *more* responsible for the continuation and establishment of the church than joseph is. blood of the prophets: brigham young and the mountain meadows massacre by will bagley is a good if dry account of one of the worst acts that was at least condoned by him, and it gives context for ealry mormon settlement in utah, but unfortunately not much more.

mormon polygamy: a history by richard van wagoner is a very good account of the practice of polygamy and it gives by proxy a lot of context of the early mormon church post-joseph, as well as the establishment of utah and conflicts between mormons and the federal government.

a book i haven't read yet but gotten extracts from and heard good stuff about it is watchman on the tower: ezra taft benson and the making of the mormon religious right by matthew l harris. it explains how a more recent mormon prophet's anti communist and anti civil right views and activism (and his involvement in the john birch society) have radicalized mormons to this day, leading to the vast majority of them being deeply conservative and voting republican en masse, despite being despised by other white christians. it also talks a lot about the role of race in the church. if you're interested specifically about modern mormons and their political uniformity, this is a good one to read into.

if you want to read more on the church's control on its members finances, i'd suggest to begin with the recent ensign peak scandal. mormon stories has a few eps covering the subject that explains to non members why so many people have been upset by it--including the fact that members have been threatened with excommunication and denied access to mormonism's highest sacriments because they weren't considered to pay enough tithing.

in general on the cult/high demand front, i'd suggest you also check out the subreddit r/exmormon, where a lot of members who are leaving the church discuss these issues and have a number of resources on the subject, including for people just leaving or doubting.

i have other sources but...... it is 3:24am lol. if you have questions on a particular subject please don't hesitate to ask

edit: i forgot to talk about missionaries FUCK. easily the most cultish aspect of mormonism. uhhhh STRONGLY recommend checking mormon stories and looking for stories about missions in particular, many of them talk about how high demand missions are and how their role is less to convert souls and more to radicalize and fully indoctrinate young mormons. they're incredibly unsafe and fucked up and mandate mutual surveillance and constant violations of privacy and tend to work young missionaries to the bone and grind them until they can do nothing but comply

#eli talks #what was my mormon tag again. i'll find it tomorrow

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whumpshaped · 5 months

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No cause you're right! Naming restrictions absolutely make sense, especially within certain contexts like spelling and cultures! Admittedly I was a bit surprised when learning about things like that, but I had already learned about other countries that do that (A middle school viking phase led to me learning about Icelandic naming conventions). So yeah! It makes sense! I'm sure lots of specific groups have their cultural naming conventions here (the aforementioned Mormons, Amish, First Nations, etc etc) so there's just nothing at a National Level, if you get what I mean!

mormons and cults in general get away w a lot of shit i noticed...... so it makes sense names would be one of them. icelandic naming traditions r cool :D personally im fascinated by the insanely long names some spanish/portuguese ppl have. maybe italians too? idk but its awesome. i love a ridiculously long name.

is there anything the US as a nation collectively agrees on /j ok im done making stupid US jokes i dont know shit abt the US <- knows way more abt the US than wants or needs to through sheer osmosis

#asks #i started on the names list #im gonna put it into a doc #im trying to hunt down all 70 approved names but i dont think im gonna be able to #but i'll put all the 4570 approved names in the doc too on the last however many pages #and my personal favourites (sometimes with translations i think) in the middle #i managed to find 11/70 so far..... its so.... hard........ idk why no article has a complete list of the 2023 names its annoying #hungarian naming discussion

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fierceawakening · 5 months

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I think Tumblr is thankfully a little over its “people with NPD are smol beans uwu” phase (or maybe it’s just that I’ve finally filtered that cadre of people out and those left are a bit more friendly to “demonizing people is bad! Obvi! but there’s also a reason many people find people with those traits difficult to be in close relationships with,” which is pretty much where I am) but I am Thinking about something

Some of you know that I’ve been following the Ruby Franke child abuse case. Franke was a Mormon influencer and mommy vlogger who was popular but who many people worried was overly harsh with her kids to the point of abuse. She had a close associate named Jodi Hildebrandt who at the time was a licensed therapist.

One of her kids fled Jodi’s home and had been severely physically abused (tied up in such a way it left deep wounds which were then “treated” with cayenne pepper paste), blowing the whole thing wide open. Ruby and Jodi both were charged with aggravated child abuse and both pled guilty to four of six counts and are awaiting sentencing.

Anyway people have been following the story, and one thing that’s become very clear is that Jodi was a profoundly unethical therapist and has a history both of abusing kids and of ruining adult clients’ marriages. It’s a mess and a train wreck and very obvious when you look into Jodi that she had a kind of cult leader personality. (People suspected she wouldn’t plead guilty just because she’s SO rigid about her beliefs in the videos.) I know the one true way to help kids grow, society disapproves but I’m right, etc.

And there’s one video of her that people watch for the shock of it. She is sitting with Ruby in the basement they used as a video studio, and she goes off on a rant that gets more and more unhinged as she goes on. She’s upset that she’s getting bad reviews on her videos and people saying her techniques are abusive, and she says something to the effect of “I’ve made it really easy to give us a five star review, but you guys aren’t doing it! Why aren’t you doing it? You need to go do it right now. We’re getting all these one stars and we need you to help us fix it.”

It’s fascinating for the complete lack of acknowledgement that anyone might just not like the content, or give one star because they disagree with the techniques. Especially when viewers were mentioning repeatedly that they were concerned the techniques were too harsh and could even be abusive. If someone thinks that about what you’re teaching, yeah, they’ll give one star. Should be obvious? But she’s just like “I don’t know why you all aren’t doing this. Go do it.”

Anyway I bring this up because I’ve watched a LOT of videos on this, and that’s included several mental health professionals watching the videos and debunking the supposedly revolutionary new techniques of Jodi’s as abusive discipline with a weird half new age half religious conservative polish on it.

And EVERY ONE of the reactions I can remember from trained professionals says “this behavior is a clear indicator of narcissism. I would absolutely be looking out for more things like this to make a diagnosis if I were asked to do so.”

What intrigues me here is the clear consensus, and how little it resembles what I’ve seen people here on Tumblr say being narcissistic is like, which as they describe it seems to be destructive perfectionism plus struggles to empathize with people they’re not deeply close to.

Which I dunno. I think this discourse has kind of faded anyway at least off my own dash, but… I dunno. I think tumblr can sometimes get very echo chamber y about what a particular illness looks like, and everyone can sometimes all jump on a less central symptom because some posts are going viral.

Anyway I found it very interesting to see the professionals focusing very much on someone literally demanding praise, an unusual behavior that most would find striking, when the talk of tumblr was all “oh I’m a perfectionist, just to a degree where I do myself harm,” which sounds a lot more like understandably shitty coping and not “wow that’s pretty out of touch yeah.”

I dunno. I guess my point is… we love the idea of personal stories and experiential knowledge because it fits our broader politics, but it’s worthwhile to check what the scholars have to say to make sure we’re not taking one person’s compelling account as the truth of the thing.

#child abuse mention

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caesarflickermans · 10 months

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I have, perhaps, a strange question, but does Virgilia's hairstyle have a connection with the elaborate hairstyles of ancient Rome and Greece (kinda braided hair with many different braids) ... I'm just wondering, there is a very interesting reference here 👀

Weeeell, it depends on the braid.

My original inspirations was based on cults and is meant to be an overarching metaphor for freedom. Still historical in what it is based on, but much more recent.

Cults can obviously vary in how they perceive women and especially hippie cults do not determine dress in the same manner as conservative ones do. In particular, I want to point out the FLDR cult which is a sub-section of the Later Day Saints (Mormonism). This cult lived under extreme patriarchy, displayed through their plural marriage system and the idea that women are sinful because of Eve. The wives must dress in a traditional manner and wear their hair in braids:

(Suspiciously they are all white, huh)

All cults praise their leading figure to a high extent, which is something they often have in common with totalitarian systems, but this one in particular stood out to me in how they dress.

This isn't to say that FLDR is the sole cult which gave me the impression on how extremely patriarchal men like to see their women, but I think it's a very exemplary case.

Another such case that I remember watching and that shaped my image on how such conservative cults function is a TedTalk by Lilia Tarawa. I'm sharing this with a timestamp of a visual impression of the cult itself, but the whole story is worth the watch.

(BTW none of this is to say that I picture Virgilia with such hair or in such dress, just that it makes you think on how controlled body and hair is, and how the latter seems to be restricted)

The overarching metaphor I wanted to establish was freedom. Virgilia doesn't get the freedom to decide that she prefers braided hair. It's something she has been taught from an early age onward that carried into adulthood. It's what she must do, as a woman, as a (future) wife. It's a restriction on who she might rather want to be. Think of tree shaping. It's done by human hands, it's the fundament all the latter parts of a tree are based on. It's never changing and will forever be their earlier life stages.

The moments we see Virgilia without her braided hair are, of course, very important. First when Plutarch catches sight of her late at night in a nightgown with her hair undone, and it's a haunting gaze, it's a human in their rawest form. Then a second time when they have sex which, of course, is highly intimate.

And this is important about Virgilia's hair: It's full updo. It's controlled, and that's not something true to half up half down, or even fishtails or, well, open hair.

SPOILER ALERT/ For the second part, I have already envisioned more of such moments, but the pivotal idea is that there is an undoing of Virgilia's braided hair. That there's freedom associated with letting her hair down. And we get some more Plutarch being fascinated by it, and a different way to perceive her hair through that lens, too /END SPOILER ALERT

So to return to your question regarding Ancient Roman/Greek inspiration.. I mean, kind of? I know there's roman braided hair such as this:

And to that: Yes.

But I've also seen styles like those:

And that's a no. Simply because those are "too free".

When I picture Virgilia, it's mostly more modernised versions of updos, but not those where the hair is free and flowing through the wind and 50 strands have already fallen out, cause it's about no freedom which inadvertently is a lack of control.

And Google has kindly provided me with some modern versions of Ancient Roman/Greek hairstyles that I definitely can see Virgilia having done in the past, such as:

(The last one only if it doesn't fall apart when wearing it. I have no concept on how to braid hair whatsoever)

So yeah, hope this long post was uhm.. insightful. I did ramble a bit off topic but I hope that's okay! :)

#she smelled like white roses #virgilia snow #inbox #pollinarys #thank you so much for this question 😭#i love talking about virgilia she's so <3 <3

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pansy2005 · 1 year

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yeah i wont even try to defend the joseph smith pop art on there its ridiculous 💀 maybe i have a higher than average mormon tolerance because i know a lot of them. its still ridiculous…i dont hold it against him though. anyways!!!

its SO funny though dfgsdf. totally understandable for me its that my partner grew up in it (was actually in the same stake as dallon at one point lmao) so ive learned a lot about the internal culture and talked with a lot of exmormons about how. truly fucked it is. and its like. its a cult. and people get brainwashed and have a really hard time getting out of that because its fucking hard! so i try and give some leeway to people still in it cuz i dont know him, and maybe internally he's struggling with it like a lot of people are. but its also not like he hasn't been exposed to the world outside of it ever. he's seen a whole lot of the world and knows a lot of exmos. so like how much of an extremely wealthy and powerful organization's awful actions can you overlook and continue to support. especially when youve got a fanbase of SO MANY young queer people.

and there are a lot of mormons his age that are in this same spot where theyre like "the ideas are good its the people that are bad" or whatever (which sounds great, until you actually get into the ideas and their history beyond the surface level) and there's a whole cultural struggle going on of people trying to change it or (more commonly) just hoping that the church will change on its own but its like. how long can you continue to give your time and energy and money to this organization that has proven itself over and over again to be racist, homophobic, transphobic and misogynist?

anyway you did not ask for an essay so sorry but i do appreciate you not being an asshole and speaking genuinely. no disrespect to people who like him! just no respect to him

[btw if you or anyone else wants to learn more (because, aside from my own personal stake in the exmo world, i think it's sort of fascinating, the culture and the history and the stories of people who have left) i would recommend the latter day lesbian podcast (they are very funny and so sweet and genuine), mormonstories.org, zelph on the shelf on youtube, or of course my wife @flamethrowergf with firsthand experience who is Always ready to shittalk mormons]

#sorry this is so long but like. i just want ppl to understand where im coming from on this #hence my lack of tolerance

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wowbright · 2 years

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Fic: Between Eternity and Eritrea

@klaine-word-scramble: bravery (+ rave, bay, ray, very, rev, year, bear, ear, rare, are, bare, berry, brave, bra)

Words: ~2200 words

Rating: Teen and up

Summary: Blaine must control his thoughts. But he can't control his insights.

This is part of my Mormon!Klaine universe. It takes place directly after Dawning and before The Luckiest.

My Mormon!Klaine Masterpost. (More recent posts are in bold.)

––––

Lunch was difficult. Kurt ordered berry gelato for desert, and it stained his lips red. He gave Blaine a taste from his cone, and Blaine thought it was okay, but not as good as his amarena. As they walked from the gelateria to the museum, though, all Blaine could think about every time he looked at Kurt’s face was how much nicer berry gelato might taste when combined with the warmth of Kurt's mouth.

So Blaine avoided looking at Kurt’s face the way the other missionaries avoided looking into the window of the bra store on Heiliggeiststrasse. Instead, he made slow, deliberate conversation with Elder Meeks and told him that he was doing great with his German, which was true. It was also true that his accent was incredibly American, that he kept messing up his word order, and his conjugations and declensions were all over the place. But he was doing great for someone who had only spoken the language for a few weeks.

“You're brave, Elder Meeks,” Blaine said.

“I am?”

“Yeah. You left home and flew across the Atlantic to teach people about the gospel in a language you'd never even spoken before.”

“I guess. But then you are, too. And everyone else in this mission.” Elder Meeks slipped into English. “Even the ones who didn't fly across the Atlantic. If anyone should get a medal of bravery, it's Elder Halberstadt for putting up with my terrible German. And all the investigators who have to listen to me talk about the law of chastity my very first day here. That must have been as painful for them as it was for me.”

“The law of chastity on your first day? That's rough. But I'm sure you did fine. And sooner than you know it, you’ll be fluent.”

“When did that happen for you?”

“Oh, it—” Blaine stopped himself. He'd been about to say that he still wasn't fluent come on but he didn't want to discourage a greenie. “I think I was about four or five weeks in when it all started to rev up—how fast I could speak, how fast I could think, how fast I could understand. I remember giving a lesson, and somewhere in the middle of the discussion I realized that I had used the dative case with an adjective correctly in a sentence without even thinking about it.”

Elder Meeks sighed. “Dative is the worst. Well, no, subjunctive is. Will I understand subjunctive a year from now?”

“Sooner than that,” Blaine said, and patted Elder Meeks on the back. “But for now, stop thinking about it. I mean, I know it's hard, since everyone around you is speaking German. But don't worry about doing it well for now. As long as people understand you after your third or fourth try, you're doing fine.”

That got a delayed laugh out of Elder Meeks. It took him a few seconds to understand it, even with Blaine speaking slowly.

The group split up soon after arrival at the Deutsches Museum. The museum was huge, and everyone had different priorities for what they wanted to see in their short time there. Blaine headed to the textile bay with Kurt.

The exhibit truly was as fascinating as Kurt had promised. Blaine wished they could spend the whole day there, peering in at the different parts of the looms and spindles and figuring out how everything worked.

But Kurt was more fascinating. As Blaine avoided looking at Kurt’s mouth, he noticed other things that he must have seen before, but somehow hadn't registered. He became aware of the shape of Kurt’s left ear lobe and the pale half moons at the base of his fingernails. He noticed how the lines around Kurt’s knuckles grew deeper as he straightened his fingers and then smoothed out when he curled them shut. He saw that Kurt’s face wasn’t uniformly freckled from the summer sun, but the color was heavier over the bridge of his nose and along his cheek bones.

Blaine tried not to wonder how many freckles were on the areas of skin that Kurt never laid bare to the sun.

Blaine listened to Kurt rave about each detail of the Jacquard loom, and he felt that same level of enthusiasm for all the little nuances of Kurt.

“I guess we should tear ourselves away from the textile machines and figure out where the heck our companions de jour have gone,” Kurt said as they came to the last piece in the collection. “I can hardly bear to leave, though.”

“We could come back sometime, on a P-day.”

Kurt smiled. “That would be fun. Still not long enough, considering how big this museum is, but fun.”

“Well, no one’s stopping us from coming back after our missions,” Blaine added recklessly. “I mean, besides budgetary concerns. But there are cheap flights sometimes, and we could stay at the YMCA again, or a hostel, or with members we've met here.”

Kurt gave him an odd look, but not displeased. “You're so much more forward-thinking than I am. I can barely imagine what I’ll be doing the week after I get home from my mission, much less when you get back from yours.”

“Well, first you’ll visit me in Arizona.”

“Will I?” Kurt was clearly doing his darnedest to keep from smiling, and he was sort of failing. It was cute.

“Yes. And I will introduce you to prickly pears. And then, if you let me, I'll visit you in Ohio. We'll drive to the Kirtland Temple together. How far it that from Lima?”

“Lima's northwest and Kirtland’s northeast, near Cleveland. So three or four hours, maybe? I'm not sure. I've never been. You know it fell into the hands of an apostate branch, don’t you?”

Blaine shrugged. “That may be, but it's still the first temple of the restoration. Jesus Christ and Moses visited there. The holiness can't be completely gone. and after that, will come back to Munich to really explore the Deutsches Museum. And maybe the Hofbrauhaus.”

Kurt laughed. “Oh? Planning to become a lush after visiting the apostate temple?”

Blaine’s face warmed pleasantly. “We can go to the Hofbrauhaus without ordering beer. It's supposed to be beautiful, you know. With vaulted ceilings and painted murals and leaded glass windows, like a Catholic church.”

“Well, beer is the local religion. Makes sense.”

They’d made a plan to meet in the piano room at 2 p.m., and though Blaine was eager to see all the different kinds of keyboard instruments on display there, he wasn't as eager to meld back into a larger group. He dawdled where he could, pointing out some new and unexpected thing to his companion. They got tiny tastes of marine navigation, electronics, X-ray imaging, bridge construction, and geodesy.

When they arrived in the piano room, the other missionaries hadn't arrived yet. Blaine was glad. He had Kurt and twenty pianos. He didn't want anything else.

They began to look around when, suddenly, a grand piano began to play all of its own accord.

“Oh my gosh!” Kurt exclaimed. “How is it doing that?”

In retrospect, Blaine realized he had seen a museum worker bending over that piano just a moment before. She must have set it to playing. The worker now stood off to the side, behind one of the harpsichords. Blaine and his companion watched the keys of the Steinway-Welte grand piano move as if invisible hands were pressing them.

It was eerie. It wasn't like player pianos that Blaine had heard before. It sounded like there was an actual human at the keyboard—not just a human, but an expert pianist, because he recognized this as a Chopin piece that he'd never even attempted because he'd been too intimidated by the challenge, and it sounded amazing—some keys pressed softly and others with more firmness, the pedals lowering at just the right moments.

They read the sign. Normally, Blaine would have asked the worker about it. But he didn't want to interrupt the flow of the music. It was a reproducing piano, capable of recording each aspect of a musical performance—not just the notes, but the tempo and phrasing and expression—and then playing it back. They were listening to a performance from a century before, by a woman long dead. The piano was so rare that the specialists at the museum still hadn’t figured out how it all worked.

But they could still resurrect the dead and help them live again.

The observation sent a domino chain of thoughts cascading through Blaine’s mind. “Do you ever think,” he asked, after the final notes had faded from the room, “that the Plan of Salvation seems too easy?”

Kurt laughed bitterly. “You're asking a guy who seems to be constitutionally incapable of falling in love with a member of the opposite sex, so I would say, no.”

Usually, this kind of comment would have filled Blaine with a sense of guilt. Guilt over Kurt’s pain, guilt that Blaine couldn't take that pain on for him, and guilt over adding to it by saying something stupidly oblivious.

But now, Blaine felt recognition. It suddenly made sense why the Plan of Salvation had never felt quite right to him. “No, I didn't mean that kind of easy. I meant … too straightforward. Too easy to explain. Because most things aren't easy to explain. Even this piano right here. Humans invented it, humans built it, and yet no one alive completely understands how it works. And there are spiritual things we don't understand, too. Like, nobody ever been able to explain the Holy Spirit to me. The Holy Spirit is deity, but also, you can't be a God without first having a physical body that gets tested and proven worthy of salvation and, later, godhood. So how can the Holy Spirit not have a physical body, but we still say he's a God? Or she's a God. I guess he, the leaders always refer to the Holy Spirit as he, but how can he be a he if he doesn't have a physical body?”

“The Family Proclamation says that gender is eternal, and that our spirits had gender before we were born. If our spirits had gender, and he's a spirit, then I guess he can have gender too.”

The answer didn't satisfy Blaine. What was the point of having a gender if you were never going to have a physical body, which clearly the Holy Spirit wouldn't, because he'd already ascended to godhood through some alternate path that not even the leaders of the church knew about? But that was a tangent Blaine would have to explore later. “I only brought up the Holy Spirit as an example of something that's confusing and not completely explained.”

“Fair enough.”

“OK, so there's lots of things that we don't understand. But the Plan of Salvation—for some reason, our church leaders have totally figured out the exact steps that every human being on earth needs to take in order to become like God? Doesn't matter if you were born into a rich family in Mesa, Arizona, or live on less than a dollar a day in Eritrea. You're supposed to give ten percent of your income to the church and get married in the temple. It's all the same requirements even though the person who lives in Mesa, who has enough money to fly wherever they want in the world, could literally walk to the temple if they wanted to. But if you're poor in Eritrea and can't even feed your family three meals a day, you're expected to meet all the same requirements even though the temple is like—I don't know. Where's the closest temple to Eritrea?”

“I'm not sure,” said Kurt. “Where is Eritrea?”

“Next to Ethiopia, across the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia.”

“I thought the Red Sea was in Israel.”

What was wrong with Ohio schools? Blaine would have to give Kurt a geography lesson later. “Northeast Africa. South of Egypt, sort of.”

“Oh. There aren’t any temples in the Middle East.”

“Well, I know there's one in Nairobi. In Kenya. Which is in eastern Africa.”

“I know where Nairobi is,” Kurt said with a huff.

“OK. So let's say Nairobi. What is that? Maybe a thousand miles south of Eritrea, at least? So, you live on less than a dollar a day in Eritrea and you're a church member and you need to go to the temple. How are you supposed to get there? You can’t. And yet God expects the exact same key indicators from you, even though the sacrifice is infinitely bigger? It doesn't make sense.”

“God is just. He’ll work it all out in the end.”

“I know. You believe that. I believe that. Almost every single member of the church believes that. But that's not what we teach investigators. That's not what gets preached at general conference. The apostles tell us that they know the exact formula for getting to heaven. That there's one way to do it, for every single one of us, and … I don't believe it. Because if it's true, it condemns way too much of humanity.”

Kurt furrowed his brows. “I don't think—”

“Hey, elders!” Elder St. James came barreling through the doorway. “Did you see the weather satellites? Those were awesome. I always thought that if acting doesn't work out for me, it would be fun to be a meteorologist.”

It took Blaine moment to process what Elder St. James had said. His brain was still stuck somewhere between Eritrea and eternity. “You're an actor?”

“Yeah. Elder Hummel didn’t tell you?”

“Of course I didn't tell him,” Kurt said wryly. “What do you think, Elder St. James, that I regale every new companion with the details of your life?”

Elder St James shrugged. “I don't see why not. I'm very interesting.”

#mormon!klaine #wowbright writes fic #klaine-word-scramble #klaine fanfic #mormon stuff #Yeah I kind of stopped mid scene but I've used all the words and you know what I will pick up with the next prompt

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