#protestantism really fucks you up

[whyyoualwayssoradical]

realized i was gay in middle school but at the time with all the protestant pentecostal holiness churching i had, it made my perspective see it as just giving in to "sin". i remember completely breaking down one night at like the precipice of the realization of what and who i really was but i was so committed to being christian or whatever i went the complete opposite direction mentally and thought i had to stop "sinning". i don't know maybe i'm just stupid and none of this makes sense to anyone but it's like i was so determined to live up to my mom's expectations and her wanting me to be a good christian and me being cut off from the rest of the world i just took it and buried it as deep as i could and tried everything to blend in as straight but likely not as well as i thought i might have been. the only thing that really mattered perception wise was that i knew if any kind of rumor made it back to my family about my sexual orientation i was going to experience some kind of hell on earth. so it didn't really matter what i got called at school as long as nothing that was said could amount to me actually potentially being gay, so i mentally just ruled it out so to speak and just tried to be Not Gay if you can even believe that's possible to do as like a middle schooler, i just know i was terrified of anyone perceiving me or anything i did as incorrect in regards to my family. basically small enough town everyone knew who i was or their parents knew who i was and knew my parents or someone that knew my parents and basically anything i did was under a microscope because i was the Baby of the <family name> and that's who i always was. i was my dad's son or my mom's son or the younger brother of my brothers.

looking back everything makes sense to me now i think. i thought i had to be straight and there were nothing else, i thought it was inevitable that i was going to have to be intimate with the opposite sex and i hated the idea of that, i didnt even understand why people dated each other, let alone get married and do the required things to have children. i was always friends with more girls than boys but once i got to middle school boys and girls just hanging out wasn't like a thing anymore for some reason socially. i hated boys so much, mean assholes all of them so i always tried to hang out with girls but eventually i stopped being allowed to. i had all these weird and warped perceptions of everything social related and i just never understood any of it and i was just trying to recognize patterns and try to blend in to not stick out but i was still obviously very different to some kids and i eventually figured out how to blend in well enough that most kids just left me alone by late middle school.

i don't know i feel like my mind is so completely messed up and unraveling it has been a monumental task

#i dont know this is what i remember and what i can best make out #its all really confusing #protestantism really fucks you up #still afraid of my dad potentially just wanting to kill me for being gay #sorry #always afraid to talk about these experiences because of how it will get interpreted and people often misinterpret me #i dont know how else to describe it all #it probably sounds stupid #maybe delete maybe not

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

feel weird about this post, maybe because i think three films (one of which i liked a lot, one of which i thought was a surprisingly fun toy commercial with script problems, one of which i cannot make myself watch because it’s little fucking women) is kind of not a lot to hang this kind of “always” characterization on especially given that one of them is a toy commercial and the other one is about an eighteen year old and actually has nothing whatsoever to say about marriage, maybe because i cannot take seriously someone being like “this filmmaker conspicuously avoids queer desire and female sexuality entirely” based on a sample set of movies that are (1) about a high school student who brw fucks (2) an adaptation of a 19th century children’s novel which is, i promise you, so much more directly about protestantism than you remember, and (3) a toy commercial. like “over and over and over and over again” feels…. it just feels really strong. and it feels, idk, really weird to me to say that 2-3 movies about being a single woman necessarily have some kind of intentional absence rather than simply making a deliberate choice, like we are, like, just drowning culturally in positive depictions of women whose lives are about something else, lmao. like i don’t, um…. i just don’t think i am ever going to find it particularly feminist to criticize a particular depiction or even a particular body of work for omitting sex 🤷🏻‍♀️ i am saying all of this btw as a person who like, the number one genre of film i am instantly down to watch is “movies by lesbian filmmakers” and that was true when i identified as straight. but also i guess i am saying this as a person who more or less thinks of portrait as a lady on fire as having a happy ending because i see it as a story about a woman artist, which i actually think is the real consistency among gerwig’s three (3) movies even if i think barbie does not actually execute that theme with any success (and even if to be clear i don’t think she is anywhere near sciamma). anyway. maybe i also just think the snide “often, they don’t have sex at all” as “feminist” (lol) “critique” (lol) is, like, extremely 2012.

there was also a reblog OP did of some tags where someone was like “i read it as an aroace narrative” and they were like “that’s great but she wasn’t doing that on purpose!” and OP added this tag:

which like. i mean i did not feel reflected by barbie because i am not 14. but like as a bisexual woman who has been in a relationship for basically my entire adult life, there is a way in which i actually do tend to feel reflected by stories about women who walk away entirely from the domain of romance and sex. who - horrors! - “don’t fuck at all.” i find that narrative, when done well, compelling and personally salient. if gerwig made a movie that wasn’t little women or barbie about it, i would probably find some real value in it! and i find…. off-putting… the idea that one is supposed to prefer reflections in the form of “identity” rather than uh [checks notes] a human person behaving in ways that are resonant to me. that one in fact should desire movies that “purposefully” make narratives to “reflect me.” i think that assumption reveals some weird assumptions about how art gets made and a weird depressing narrow view of how to relate to art.

in conclusion i believe in equality and i think that if christopher nolan can make 11 movies in a row with zero sexual content at all before finally having his streak broken only by the immovable historical object of j robert oppenheimer’s sexual magnetism (i’m not being weird he literally said this) i think greta gerwig who with her toy commercial follow up slated to be a pair of narnia movies i think is pretty clearly angling to be girl christopher nolan should be allowed to keep making movies i think are Fine about ambitious unhorny women for years to come. or whatever the fuck she’s gonna make narnia about, i certainly will not be watching.

#idk man i am not like a major gerwig fan or anything but #this post rly bugged me!

[gwydionmisha]

Personal: I Have a Lot of Feelings about a Lot of Things

I have lost track of how many missed cleaning appointments there were. It's been weeks. I've been scheduling twice a week since November in hopes of getting one a month. Which is annoying, but not nightmarish right now, but gets ugly fast in March, when Goth Millennial is going to burn through all their hours fast taking care of me post surgery.

The Millennials are working out a cooking schedule between them, but this is a huge load on Goth Millennial's shoulders.

Basically the company Medicare is out sourcing to is falling apart because treating their contract workers like shit and lying to them about things like mileage compensation when hiring them is a terrible business model in this economy on top of being an incredible shitty way to treat humans. My decision to start calling them the Asshole Agency within a week or two of starting to deal with them continues to be vindicated. The workers there need a union since the company is devoted to it's assholery, but I get why it's easier to quit.

The system is collapsing, basically. The Medicare advantage people know this and are "discussing options."

So Friday I spent hours playing phone tag with local volunteer organizations trying to get six weeks of help, but those systems are already flooded with people who are supposed to be getting Medicare advantage help, but can't because the Asshole agency isn't sending people and hasn't been for months. Still, I was hoping a short term acute need might get me in. The secular one got right back to me. They are full up. No word yet from the Catholics and the group that coordinates a bunch of protestant organizations.

I have been told over and over to try to get a church involved, but I'm not Christian and it feels weird, especially since most of my contacts with Christian strangers in the last couple decades involve aggressive proselytizers. I have Christian friends who are cool. I have no beef with the Quakers or the Unitarians or the Episcopalians or the Catholics who are trying to change things from within (Nuns on a Bus, queer friends trying to push their parish left) or what have you. I do have a beef with extremists, which most evangelicals are and the more conservative strands of catholic, orthodox, and Protestantism and there are a lot of door to door Mormons, Jehovah's witnesses, etc. in my part of the country.

Look, a had late family members who were very involved in their churches who were decent people with reasonable views. I was a Queer Medievalist and I have some sexy late medieval saint pin ups to prove it mixed in with all my other art, some of which references assorted other religions, despite never having been Catholic. I have a Quaker friend closer to me than my own sister.

I just… Christian religious strangers in my house make me uncomfortable as a queer non-Christian in a country where Christo-fascists are trying to make me literally illegal.

I know it would likely be fine. I did fine and made lots of friends at University which doing a major that is mostly Catholics, Ex-Catholics, and people in the process of converting. I come from a debate culture. I can quote scripture like Satan. ;) I was in Philosophy before I dropped out and moved west and switched to History in one form or another. I can talk theology across a whole lot of denominations and the major "heresies." I just don't want to anymore and I haven't wanted to for a long time. That was long ago and far away when I wasn't so exhausted and in pain.

I should have stared looking last August or October.

I am likely fucked because I waited too long.

Sigh.

In other news, I've been really doing well on the massive number of now mostly advanced physio things I have to do every day.

Sunday I was about a third of the way in when my arm noped out of about another third of Sunday's quota. I am trying to do all the remaining ones that don't move my arm that way, but I'm not sanguine.

I forgot to do my blood work Friday. I have an afternoon pre-op appointment Monday. Let us hope I remember then. I am so tired and it all hurts so much.

#Personal

[katzkinder]

I am so full of pumpkin bisque and so happy about it and while eating my soup I found a couple things of extreme interest I want to share

First of all, this speech bubble here while Tsurugi is having a bad trip down memory lane is literally the basis for chapter 122, and this was spoken by him aaaall the way back in Chapter 48 (adds another tally to the white board that says Mikuni and Tsurugi are working together)

And then on the next page, Tsurugi says this.

Here he is referencing a quote by Martin Luther, father of Lutheranism and one of the largest branches of Protestantism in the modern day, and he and the Catholics really did not see eye to eye. ... Neither did he and the Jews. ... Or the Muslims. ... Or... Anyone, really. Dude was hateful as shit. Anyway, moving on.

The actual quote itself goes "Even if I knew the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree"

It's really significant that he can't recall the type of tree, and that he brings this up while spiraling through thoughts of the past because the quote itself is about doing things even if you won't be there to see the outcome, purely because it's the right thing to do.

Tsurugi can't remember the type of tree because he himself is incapable, as his current self, of doing the right thing, but it also indicates him as someone who is unsuited to be a keeper of the apples, as he can't even take the first step to plant them.

He's unsuited to stand by Freya, right from the beginning, long before we even know she's there.

This also is a way of pointing at Envy pair and screaming "THEY DO NOT GET ALONG!!!" lmaooo fucking love it

#servamp #kat's katerwauling #tsurugi kamiya

[infinitelytheheartexpands]

If you were tasked to design a 'modern' production of Les Huguenots, what would that look like? (Sorry if you've been asked this before)

this is a great question.

(sorry: this is going to take a lot of thought to say exactly what i want to say.)

so first off: i want to say that not only do i think les huguenots COULD work in a modern setting, i actually WANT to see it in a modern setting.

however.

there is a very important point that must be addressed first, and the point is this:

les huguenots was NOT written to be a historically accurate rendering of the lead up to and first night of the saint bartholomew’s day massacre. there are a lot of reasons for this, ranging from censorship (catherine de médicis was originally set to make a sung appearance but the censors nixed it) to plain and simple authorial intent. meyerbeer, scribe, and deschamps DID experiment with making it more faithful to the history, adding more historical characters to the sung dramatis personae, writing additional scenes, and so on. ultimately, however, that was not how the opera ended up!

IT IS NOT MEANT TO BE HISTORICALLY ACCURATE.

it’s not really meant to be a political drama either. yes, there’s a lot of politics in it, and a significant number of the opera’s main characters are people who (at least in the world of the opera) have either significant political power, a significant title/position with the government/political system, or both. but it’s not meant to be a political drama. like i said, this is not about the dealings that specifically led up to the saint bartholomew’s day massacre. we don’t really address the fact that france had been catholic for over a thousand years and pretty much everyone believed that the royal family was appointed by god and that introducing protestantism into the mix would destabilize that.

this opera, plain and simple, is about religion, hatred, division, and love. it’s almost apocalyptic (perfect for the utterly fucked up times in which we live). and the most chilling part: after the first night of the massacre, after thousands are slaughtered, after a father murders his own daughter, after a member of the royal family sees the carnage and tries to stop it, the massacre goes on.

how many times since 1572 or 1836 has the world stood by and let these kinds of horrors go on?

how many such horrors are going on right now?

“but savannah,” you say, “catholics and protestants haven’t fought like that and massacred each other for hundreds of years.” first off, ireland. (no, i am not suggesting that a modern-day production of les huguenots should be set in ireland. besides i don’t even know that much about the troubles.)

second off, the important thing, i think, is less the actual existence of something and more whether it is recognizable to its audience.

even if, in contemporary france or anywhere else, catholics and protestants no longer fight one another on the level they did during the french wars of religion, we all recognize division and hatred, especially the kinds embedded in culture and allowed—and perpetrated—by the government. we all know the ways that people interact with their religion and often become religious fanatics…or people who use their faith to support their vision for a better humanity.

and we all recognize love, courage, growth, and strength in the face of injustice and persecution.

despite the ingrained setting, this is one of those operas that is far more universal than it appears. and i would want a modern production to ask them the same questions that any production would naturally ask, along with this one:

where is the injustice and inhumanity in YOUR world? it still exists. what are YOU going to do in the face of it so nothing like this happens again? how are YOU going to stand up against these systems and cultures that lead to such atrocities?

so my short answer to your question is this: i wouldn’t do anything particularly special! the important thing is to be careful, to make it modern in a way that is recognizable to the audience, and above all to trust the timelessness of the material and its themes.

that’s all. thanks for the question.

#opera tag #opera #opera asks #les huguenots #meyerbeer #giacomo meyerbeer

[julie-su]

You know what is incredible? You have so much vent art, but none of it has catholic trauma vibes. What's up with that? How do you do it?

CAM ON ENGLAHN!!!!

Catholicism is very rare in this part of the country, for very prominent historical reasons which I will glaze over.

That said, I was also raised a mix of Celtic Pagan and Judeochristian, on the Protestant side of Christianity. I do not claim judeochristianity, nor do I consider myself a Protestant.

I don't really have any trauma around it, I would say that Protestantism is a much more passive form of Christianity - 'confess in God, ask for Forgiveness, be good to thy neighbour'

There was never this concept of constant vigil that I see coming up with these American Catholic guilt posts, that "God is always watching, even your thoughts, don't even think anything remotely sinful!' No, there was more so just the concept of repentance, and asking for forgiveness, making amends, if you committed a sin.

Our Rev, she would frequently say "It is easier to ask forgiveness, than to ask for permission" XD

It was probably healthier to grow up on "If you do something bad, it will come back to bite you unless you own up to it and make it up to the people you have hurt" rather than "DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT DOING IT. YOU THOUGHT ABOUT IT? HELL. YOU ARE GOING TO HELLLLL!!!!"

...

Is Protestantism just 'Fuck Around And Find Out' The Religion? Though, I don't really know much worldly about either, so forgive me if I am overreaching. I grew up in a small village which is almost too small to be a village, and everybody there was from the immediate 30 minute car journey radius. I haven't sought out any form of Christianity since my childhood. Who knows what I've got mussed around?

[clatterbane]

Reminded again of how unused to a bunch of Christian holidays popping up, even in a mostly very secularized form these days.

That's coming from what limited exposure I did get growing up being to the less objectionable side of decidedly low church Protestantism. Half my family's nominally Methodist (after major missionizing efforts in our region, back I'm the day), and that's about as fancy as it gets. They still kinda-sorta have Lent, and put on pancake suppers every year. A lot of the rest of it? Not so much.

The Anglicans did split off early enough that there's still more of that sort of thing on a cultural level in the UK. But, then I got to Sweden. These extremely secularized culturally ingrained Lutherans really are not fucking around with the number and variety of religious holdover public holidays. Hell, they've got Christ the Aviator! (As Mr. C anglicizes it.)

I am admitting to some pretty serious ignorance here, but I don't know when most of these "not Christmas or Easter" days happen until I see them on a calendar, or what exactly the background is behind most of them. They are often good excuses to get off work--and even failing that, to eat particular pastries and such. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Also can't help but think of one occasion when my mom was doing a crossword, and resorted to asking my dad for help with one clue about some religious holiday that might fit into the space. "Why are you asking me? I was raised Baptist!" (Not that it took, like at all.) But yeah, it really is like that.

And I should maybe pick up a little more background knowledge while I'm chowing down on pastries. And also turn out some lussekatter pretty soon, since I don't know who may be selling decent GF ones. Good thing we do have the stand mixer for dough now.

#personal #religion mention

[wickerfemme]

do you have any advice on how to bring up my feeding / stuffing kink to a longish term partner?

As always, I don't know how useful I can be, but I'll chip in my thoughts. Heads-up as well that I'll be speaking with the assumption that you're someone who has sex, your partner is someone with whom you have sex, and that feedism is a sexual thing for you.

I believe that ultimately it's down to being open and communicative about what you find hot; if you're longish-term with your partner, you presumably already know what kind of sex each other like having, and have probably negotiated your different preferences (in small ways, at least: positions, kinds of touch, etc etc) before.

I think I've said this before in response to a similar ask, but despite how feedism transgresses certain social taboos (enjoying yourself, not hating fat bodies) it's also sort of just... very common, once you move past the label? We have "relationship weight"; we had a cultural moment where "thicc" was all the rage; we have cultures of hospitality and feeding others as a sign of love. In my experience of lesbianism, especially, there's this unspoken strain of something very feedist in the way food and eating become involved in love and romance and sex. And all of that is maybe why I can be dismissive of people who make a big deal about being a "closeted" feedist (not to say you're doing that); not only is it kind of corny and, as a gay person, slightly offensive, but it's also like, babe. You may be a food pervert but so are lots of people (even if protestantism and diet culture have us collectively fucked up); get over yourself.

To get back to actually bringing this up with your partner, I think the important thing is less about having this confessional moment about how you participate in a kink with a name and so on, and more about you having a good time with your partner and getting to experience sex and sexual activities you find hot. Because, to my mind at least, it's not important that these are feedist activities; what matters is that eating, being fed, being full, etc are hot and enjoyable. I think if you're someone who inclines toward the feedee role, it's probably easier to integrate this kind of thing into your existing dynamic with your partner (maybe it's just me, but partners love to feed you). Trying to introduce your kink from a feeder perspective will probably require more actual negotiation; you want a consensual and mutually-agreed upon good time.

I feel like I'm rambling at this point and losing focus, so I'm going to stop writing. tl;dr is be open and unapologetic about what you find hot, and that it doesn't need to be this big marriage proposal of a Thing. You really can say "call me a deviant, but I think peaches are erotic and it's kinda hot when someone feeds you. Dinner was so good; look how cute my belly is". It's scary to advocate for the sex you want (frankly, despite this whole post, I'm not great at doing it for myself), but you've likely done so before.

#i get halfway through a response like this and i kind of forget what i've said up til then #so if this is incoherent apologies #Anonymous

[voluptuarian]

So like not really a "worst history" post, but rather an examination of one of the most bizarre history blogs I've encountered and which I felt like I had to share. I want to study this blog like a bug

So they're basically a fan blog for historical/fantasy shows that have a major female rivalry (Magnificent Century/The Tudors). All their interests seem to be rooted in madonna vs. whore-ing female characters. But beyond all that they're a Anne Boleyn anti.

I'm not making this up. Whoever runs it is just, up their own ass about Anne. This is literally their blog description

They seem to just watch tv so they can pit female characters against each other, and to rate their morals (not even kidding, they have lists of characters ranking them by goodness and badness, which is... interesting) They apparently watch HOTD for just this reason

But most of their content is about historical figures, and the vast majority of that is anti-Anne Boleyn, Anti-Elizabeth I, or both. And, as in their blog profile, these are all either a. interpreting the motivations behind factual events in the worst possible way b. referencing Spanish/Catholic propoganda or just blaming Anne for shit Henry did c. just not true

Like the aforementioned "seducing Henry VIII with witchcraft"

(Like, dear blog-owner. It is 2021. Are you blogging from the Renaissance somehow?)

Here are some examples

First off I love the idea that Elizabeth had Essex killed because he saw her without makeup. Like, the man was so closely tied to his rebellion against Elizabeth that it's fucking named for him. Clearly that had nothing to do with his execution. It was because Elizabeth was Big Mad about her looks.

(Also the idea of Anne-- who had to work hard to appear legitimate both personally and as a supporter of Protestantism-- calling herself "harlot", "whore", etc. is always so comic, like that Definitely happened)

But secondly

like. You passed over serial killers. Nazis. child-murderers.

Ok.

(Like I'm legitimately wondering if OP is Catholic. The obsession with these 2 in particular just seems so perplexing, I'm like... are you butthurt about Anglicanism??)

But maybe my favorite part of this is the multiple posts they reblogged from Tudors/History confessions that are anti-Anne Boleyn, and all marked by the same, let's say... awkward English? as op's own. So they're very clearly submitting stuff to these blogs and then reblogging it to make it look like someone else agrees with them. (And being hella obvious about it). And none of their own posts has more than like 5 notes-- desperate behavior.

This whole blog is so fascinating, like who is out there so annoyed by a historical figure to do the whole fandom-anti-hysterics angle over them? (And if you really were so bothered by Anne, wouldn't you be more concerned with Henry-- give us a Henry VIII hate blog, that would be much more fun). I'm convinced op is actually Ambassador Chapuys, reincarnated in the 21st century as a tumblrina...

#worst history/mythology post series

[bisexualamy]

I’ve had consistently “good” insurance but I have a health condition that if untreated is potentially disabling (and in my case, career-ending) and the medication to treat it is 6k a month. And when I switched jobs my new insurance won’t cover it. So I don’t take it anymore. The pharma company is to blame too (it’s a famously price inflated drug) but it’s just so exhausting to live in a system that hates the sick. I’m really sorry about your experience this week- it’s a fucked up thing that every American it seems like has a horror story like this.

Literally every American I know has a similar story to this. It really seems like the expectation is that you shouldn't get sick. I really think we moralize illness and disability in the country (it dovetails really neatly with the particularly rancid brand of fundamentalist Christian Protestantism that, while most people don't practice, is a vocal minority of politicians and voters). Like, if you're sick or disabled, you deserve to suffer for it. It's insidious and fundamentally evil.

I'm so sorry to hear you're in that position. I've also had to switch or cease medications due to insurance bullshit and/or cost changes beyond my control. It feel awful and I'm sorry you're going through that.

#alkalilesbian #hailing frequencies open

[seeminglyseph]

One thing I’m a little confused on, like Dracula Daily readers are happy to dunk on the Catholics and like Harker is smarter than them but like…. Uh….

When England switched to Protestantism didn’t they then just use it as a way to basically declare non English as lesser people? By just really conveniently being the non-Catholic Christians?

Wasn’t that part of the point of A Modest Proposal?

Like I really love shit talking Catholics, but also shut the fuck up you Protestant bastard.

#I’m slightly stoned #I haven’t read shit yet #but still like… Americans please sit down and learn how the church functions outside of America

[jtownraindancer]

hello! i would LOVE to watch jamestown but am a little apprehensive because of possible triggers? so i thought i'd ask! is there anything i should watch out for? in the vein of like... sexual assault, hate crimes (tho this is a given bc period piece but like. how violent would it get?), and frequency of character death? thank you!

​ Hello Anon!

Absolutely a fair question, and one I'm very happy to answer! I'll address each of these one-by-one, and if there are any other possible triggers you're wondering about, please feel free to ask~

This is going to spoil some of the show, so I'm putting my full reply below the cut.

​Sexual Assault:

Right off the top of my head, there is one very distinct instance of sexual assault, right in the beginnings of Season 1 (may even be Episode 1 if memory serves). The rape itself is not graphic- there's a build up, but the scene ends before anything is actually shown. However! The attack is a defining moment for quite a few of the main cast- relationships are formed based on reactions to it (all resoundingly in the victim's corner!), and it is mentioned off-and-on again throughout the series.

Hate Crimes:

I don't… I can't quite say there are many hate crimes as we would know them, but some general things to look out for…

There is a very tentative relationship between the Colonists & the Pamunkey Tribe, a tension which builds up into the final episode where a lot of characters are killed on screen- mostly background. (Season 3 was arguably the most graphic of the lot, starting with the private execution of an alleged "traitor" to the governor.)

​The slave trade hangs heavily over the series starting at the end of Season 1, an introduction that tastes even more bitter when it's discovered that they were acquired illegally (and against the wishes of a majority of the colonists). I… I have much I'd like to say about it, but to do so would spoil a lot of plot points later. I will say however that there's nothing particularly graphic in this end (and Pedro and Marie alone are worth watching the show for!)

For queerphobia, there… wasn't much? The most that comes of it are a few instances where Thomas & Jocelyn both make jabs at Nicholas for his 'tastes,' though in the end it's clear they both really do care for him. Also in regards to an intersex character, the only fault found in her is the deception that allowed him to come to Jamestown to begin with. There's also the strong implication that not only does another character remain open-minded about folks pursuing certain 'bedfellows,' but the possibility that he himself may be queer. (Kind of a blink-and-you-miss-it moment, but definitely there.)

Religion-wise, there is definitely a period-accurate bias towards Protestantism (and a hatred/suspicion of Catholics which will come up several times), and references are made about wanting to "convert" the indigenous population, but that's about the extent of it? Some characters do use ''Christianity'' as a cover, but uh… Spoilers on that end. Put succinctly… In spite of a period-accurate lean towards Protestantism, there are still a few characters who definitely are not of the same mind. In the main cast alone, I can think of at least three Jamestown residents who stand apart from the others in terms of spirituality (or lack thereof).

Violence:

While there's not a lot of gore in this show, there are certain scenes that can seem gruesome in the context. As I found this show through PBS, I wasn't expecting a lot of gore itself, but the implications involved, and the very rare, rare moments where things are actually shown, carry enough weight on their own. (There is one scene that comes to mind with a smuggler and some molten metal, but I couldn't seem to look away; Farlow was fucking terrifying. 💀)

Character Death:

Some great news! Most of the characters survive this series!

Bad news! The characters who do leave will probably hurt!

Would like to again offer a warning for the finale of Season 3, which leads into the very real beginnings of the Indian Massacre of 1622, a slaughter that took out nearly 1/4 of the Virginian colonists. The show does not get graphic, but the implications, and the brief hints we're shown on screen do plenty of damage.

Overall:

There were quite a few liberties taken with this show, and at times it feels vaguely soap opera-esque in the writing choices. But overall I did enjoy this one, and I would recommend it! Even if you decide to watch just for Alice, Verity, and Jocelyn, I would still ask you to give it a try because there are so many interesting characters to meet in this series, and it does offer a decent (if over-exaggerated) glimpse into life in Jamestown.

If you're still interested in giving Jamestown a whirl, I hope you enjoy it! (And please feel free to scream in my inbox and/or DMs about it.)

Thanks for the ask friend; I hope this helped, and if not, please don't hesitate to reach out. Love and light!

#jamestown #anon asks #hello friend! #trigger warnings #i uh... i'm not sure how to tag this tbh #spoilers #??? #tw sex assault #tw slavery #tw queerphobia #tw violence #on a personal note? as a sa survivor i wasn't triggered so much by the actual scene & i felt a VERY strong connection to the victim #because of how she continued to confront it for years after the fact & always carried it with her #there's a hint of a modern day lean in that the contemptible characters are painted as such and it's NOT shied away from #nicholas' swan song was giving voice to words that countless others were dying to spit but didn't have the leave to #i think i'm going to rewatch this again tbh #it's only 24 episodes #another series i would have eventually watched no matter who was in the cast #burn being there is just an added bonus #fr tho anon if you'd like further clarification on anything or would prefer something more specific please let me know <3 #thanks for the ask!

[magnificentsapcaddy]

Putting this on my tumblr because nobody reads or cares what I have to say on tumblr: I have a real thorn up my ass about the discourse du jour on how you can't be queer and Christian, and especially so because it's coming from fellow queers and not Christians.

I'll step out in front of all the arguments you may want to make and say that, yes, as an institution, Christianity is bad. It's an evil institution. I'll say that freely and without objection. But the crucial thing to note is that Christianity as an institution and world power is not the same as Christianity as a religion. People have been beaten, murdered, an raped in the name of Christianity, but that does not make those tenets of the faith any more than the murder of Palestinian children is a tenet of Judaism. Because those in power use religion as a cudgel. It's a convenient way to get people in line. It's the ultimate appeal to authority; any political dissidents are sinners and infidels and thus ontologically evil. Swap out Christianity for any other faith and you get the same results.

And yes, churches are evil. All of them. Yes, even your church with the green-haired, tattooed, guitar-playing they/them pastor, and yes, especially the one your aunt preaches in. The purpose of the church in our society is not to bring people spiritual comfort or to discuss the nuances of the afterlife and our purpose for existing; the purpose of the church is to control the masses and point them towards a common scapegoat enemy so that class solidarity is impossible. The purpose is to stir up hate against gay people or black people or Mexicans so that you never stop to think your straight, white, American boss who just bought his eighth Bugatti is the one who's really fucking you other. The purpose is to make you feel like the church is the only trustworthy place in the universe, and that maybe if you tithe a little harder you'll be assured a place in Heaven when you die. The church has nothing to do with Christianity. Christianity is a pretense that they use to make you fear for your soul and hate your fellow man. Uncountably many cults have sprouted up on this exact same idea with different window dressing.

WITH THAT SAID:

This does not make Christianity "the bad religion" or "the evil religion". The thing that's driving this diatribe is this tweet that got popular that said, in effect, "how can you be queer and Christian in 2023" with a quote tweet reading "the only two people replying to this are the Protestants saying 'ermmm my church (the Unified Southern Prebyluther Church of Devotion) allows women to be preachers!' and the Catholics saying 'yes, I am aberrant in God's eyes and a sadomasochist'," and sorry to be the guy who takes a tweet to seriously and get internet mad, but, well, here we are. Viewing the entirety of Christianity as The Catholic Church and The Many Churches of Protestantism is grossly reductive. I have made my stance on churches clear, and will say with my chest that all churches are fascist institutions.

But what the fascists cannot take from us is the Bible. They can translate it and quote it and recontextualize it, but they cannot keep it from us. They cannot keep the fact that the Book of Ruth is a story about homosexual love and mutual aid away. They cannot steal the fact that the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ means that all our wrongs will be forgiven. They cannot take away the fact that, when Cain asked God if he was his brother's keeper, the next thousand-some pages of the Bible are God replying "yes".

And this is something that gay Christians and trans Christians and all the other queer Christians have had to relearn and reckon with over years, because growing up, all we're told by the mainstream churches is that being queer is sinful, and when we look into the faith itself, we find a God who loves queer people. God does not tolerate gay people or forgive trans people for their transness: God loves queers. God loves faggots and God loves dykes and God loves trannies. God loves bears and twinks and pups and pigs and leather daddies, because God made them and put them on the earth to fuck and fist and love one another, and that's beautiful. It's not cowering and trying to conform; it's a completely radical act. It's saying to the suburban Christofascists, "I know your god better than you do, and I know your god loves me more than you."

And that's why it makes me so mad to see gay people acting like it's backwards to be gay and Christian. I don't speak for everyone, of course - I'm sure there are dozens if not hundreds of gay Christians who think that God loves them despite their gayness, not because of it , and I hope they come to their senses soon - but this is not an act of complacency. We are not coping or trying to fit in. "But Christianity is homophobic!" they jeer. Christians are, and Christian churches are, but I hold that the faith is not. "But the Bible says man shall not lay with man!" they say. Do they think we don't know that? Do they think they don't know that the primary translation of our faith says that God hates us, when the original text does not? We've done our research. We know the original meaning, and we know it's been translated to work against us, and we know that is the fault of men, not of God.

I guess I want to end this by saying, no, gay Christians are not persecuted, because persecutions against Christians is not something that happens in the West outside of your Qanon uncle's septuply forwarded emails. But it is still a shitty thing to do to say that a person's faith is wrong, especially when it's a faith they've had to work hard to find solace in, and especially when they are just trying to keep to themselves and not proselytize like an ass. And, of course, all respect to all the queer people who aren't Christians or have been subject to abuse at the hands of Christians - I'm more sorrowful beyond words that monsters and cretins who proclaim to worship my god would do that to you.

#personal blatherings #delete later maybe #I don't like discoursing I just wanted to get my feelings out for a sec

[sufficient-tenacity]

So I've been talking to my biomom lately and she's so fucking Protestant. (Leaving aside that from when we last got into religion it became clear to me she had reinvented Calvinism, minus the aesthetic concerns)

Like, she believes serial killers are saved. The sheer brainrot.

Every time I talk to her I have to physically bite my tongue to stop myself from turning into a fucking Apologist.

And her theology is just... Lacking? Like it's a kindergarten understanding of Scripture and doctrine. It's sad really. She doesn't believe in anything concrete.

I've yet in my life to meet a Catholic/Ex-Catholic incapable of what's basically stand up theology and also yet to meet a Protestant with an advanced view on religion. (Out of people I've called friends, the one who I've had the best religious debates with was a former Theistic Satanist.)

The above should not be interpreted as praise for Catholicism or criticism of Protestantism.

It speaks to the lack of indoctrination (in the original sense of teaching doctrines, not brainwashing) of the average Protestant, and like... I wish that were me. I wish it wasn't my first instinct to jump to the defense of a religion captured by the Papacy, bureaucratized for the protection of serial child abusers. The Church is barely a religion, if I may stray dangerously close to Anti-Catholic talking points, it's become a shadow government.

There's a lot to be said for blind faith, you know? Just believing in something you don't fully understand. In some ways I envy that. It's impossible for me. I know too much. (That reads like autofellatio but what I mean is that knowledge is harder to lose than gain)

#vent? #sophistry

[testudoaubrei-blog]

Content note for discussions of eternal damnation, and all sorts of other shit that will trigger a lot of folks with religious trauma.

Before I get started I might as well explain where I’m coming from - unlike a lot of She-Ra fans, and a lot of queer people, I don’t have much religious trauma, or any, maybe (okay there were a number of years I was convinced I was going to hell, but that happens to everyone, right?). I was raised a liberal Christian by liberal Christian parents in the Episcopal Church, where most of my memories are overwhelmingly positive. Fuck, growing up in the 90’s, Chuch was probably the only place outside my home I didn’t have homophobia spewed at me. Because it was the 90’s and it was a fucking hellscape of bigotry where 5 year olds knew enough to taunt each other with homophobic slurs and the adults didn’t know enough to realize how fucked up that was. Anyway. This is my experience, but it is an atypical one, and I know it. Quite frankly I know that my experience of Christianity has very little at all to do with what most people experienced, or what people generally mean when they talk about Christianity as a cultural force in America today. So if you were raised Christian and you don’t recognize your theology here, congrats, neither do I, but these ideas and cultural forces are huge and powerful and dominant. And it’s this dominant Christian narrative that I’m referring to in this post. As well as, you know, a children’s cartoon about lesbian rainbow princesses. So here it goes. This is going to get batshit.

"All events whatsoever are governed by the secret counsel of God." - John Calvin

“We’re all just a bunch of wooly guys” - Noelle Stevenson

This is a post triggered by a single scene, and a single line. It’s one of the most fucked-up scenes in She-Ra, toward the end of Save the Cat. Catra, turned into a puppet by Prime, struggles with her chip, desperately trying to gain control of herself, so lost and scared and vulnerable that she flings aside her own death wish and her pride and tearfully begs Adora to rescue her. Adora reaches out , about to grab her, and then Prime takes control back, pronounces ‘disappointing’ and activates the kill switch that pitches Catra off the platform and to her death (and seriously, she dies here, guys - also Adora breaks both her legs in the fall). But before he does, he dismisses Catra with one of his most chilling lines. “Some creatures are meant only for destruction.”

And that’s when everyone watching probably had their heart broken a little bit, but some of the viewers raised in or around Christianity watching the same scene probably whispered ‘holy shit’ to themselves. Because Prime’s line - which works as a chilling and callous dismissal of Catra - is also an allusion to a passage from the Bible. In fact, it’s from one of the most fucked up passages in a book with more than its share of fucked up passages. It’s from Romans 9:22, and I’m going to quote several previous verses to give the context of the passage (if not the entire Epistle, which is more about who needs to abide by Jewish dietary restrictions but was used to construct a systematic theology in the centuries afterwards because people decided it was Eternal Truth).

19 Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?

20 Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?

21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?

22 What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:

The context of the allusion supports the context in the show. Prime is dismissing Catra - serial betrayer, liar, failed conqueror, former bloody-handed warlord - as worthless, as having always been worthless and fit only to be destroyed. He is speaking from a divine and authoritative perspective (because he really does think he’s God, more of this in my TL/DR Horde Prime thing). Prime is echoing not only his own haughty dismissal of Catra, and Shadow Weaver’s view of her, but also perhaps the viewer’s harshest assessment of her, and her own worst fears about herself. Catra was bad from the start, doomed to destroy and to be destroyed. A malformed pot, cracked in firing, destined to be shattered against a wall and have her shards classified by some future archaeologist 2,000 years later. And all that’s bad enough.

But the full historical and theological context of this passage shows the real depth of Noelle Stevenson’s passion and thought and care when writing this show. Noelle was raised in Evangelical or Fundamentalist Christianity. To my knowledge, he has never specified what sect or denomination, but in interviews and her memoir Noelle has shown a particular concern for questions that this passage raises, and a particular loathing for the strains of Protestant theology that take this passage and run with it - that is to say, Calvinism. So while I’m not sure if Noelle was raised as a conservative, Calvinist Presbyterian, his preoccupation with these questions mean that it’s time to talk about Calvinism.

It would be unfair, perhaps, to say that Calvinism is a systematic theology built entirely upon the Epistles of Romans and Galatians, but only -just- (and here my Catholic readers in particular will chuckle to themselves and lovingly stroke their favorite passage of the Epistle of James). The core of Calvinist Doctrine is often expressed by the very Dutch acronym TULIP:

Total Depravity - people are wholly evil, and incapable of good action or even willing good thoughts or deeds

Unconditional Election - God chooses some people to save because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, not because they did anything to deserve, trigger or accept it

Limited Atonement - Jesus died only to save the people God chose to save, not the rest of us bastards

Irresistible Grace - God chooses some people to be saved - if you didn’t want to be saved, too bad, God said so.

Perseverance of the Saints - People often forget this one and assume it’s ‘predestination’ but it’s actually this - basically, once saved by God, always saved, and if it looks like someone falls out of grace, they were never saved to begin with. Well that’s all sealed up tight I guess.

Reading through these, predestination isn’t a single doctrine in Calvinism but the entire theological underpinnings of it together with humanity’s utter powerlessness before sin. Basically God has all agency, humanity has none. Calvinism (and a lot of early modern Protestantism) is obsessed with questions of how God saves people (grace alone, AKA Sola Fides) and who God saves (the people god elects and only the people God elects, and fuck everyone else).

It’s apparent that Noelle was really taken by these questions, and repelled by the answers he heard. He’s alluded to having a tattoo refuting the Gospel passage about Sheep and Goats being sorted at the end times, affirming instead that ‘we’re all just a bunch of wooly guys’ (you can see this goat tattoo in some of his self-portraits in comics, etc). He’s also mentioned that rejecting and subverting destiny is a huge part of everything he writes as a particular rejection of the idea that some individual people are 'chosen' by God or that God has a plan for any of us. You can see that -so clearly- in Adora’s arc, where Adora embraces and then rejects destiny time and again and finally learns to live life for herself.

But for Catra, we’re much more concerned about the most negative aspect of this - the idea that some people are vessels meant for destruction. And that’s something else that Noelle is preoccupied with. In her memoir in the section about leaving the church and becoming a humanistic atheist, there is a drawing of a pot and the question ‘Am I a vessel prepared for destruction?’ Obviously this was on Noelle’s mind (And this is before he came out to himself as queer!).

To look at how this question plays out in Catra’s entire arc, let’s first talk about how ideas of damnation and salvation actually play out in society. And for that I’m going to plug one of my favorite books, Gin Lun’s Damned Nation: Hell in America from the Revolution to Reconstruction (if you can tell by now, I am a fucking blast at parties). Lun tells the long and very interesting story about, how ideas of hell and who went there changed during the Early American Republic. One of the interesting developments that she talks about is how while at first people who were repelled by Calvinism started moving toward a doctrine of universal salvation (no on goes to hell, at least not forever*), eventually they decided that hell was fine as long as only the right kind of people went there. Mostly The Other - non-Christian foreigners, Catholics, Atheists, people who were sinners in ways that were not just bad but weird and violated Victorian ideas of respectability. Really, Hell became a way of othering people, and arguably that’s how it survives today, especially as a way to other queer people (but expanding this is slated for my Montero rant). Now while a lot of people were consciously rejecting Calvinist predestination, they were still drawing the distinction between the Elect (good, saved, worthwhile) and the everyone else (bad, damned, worthless). I would argue that secularized ideas of this survive to this day even among non-Christian spaces in our society - we like to draw lines between those who Elect, and those who aren’t.

And that’s what brings us back to Catra. Because Catra’s entire arc is a refutation of the idea that some people are worthless and irredeemable, either by nature, nurture or their own actions. Catra’s actions strain the conventions of who is sympathetic in a Kid’s cartoon - I’ve half joked that she’s Walter White as a cat girl, and it’s only half a joke. She’s cruel, self-deluded, she spends 4 seasons refusing to take responsibility for anything she does and until Season 5 she just about always chooses the thing that does the most damage to herself and others. As I mentioned in my Catra rant, the show goes out of its way to demonstrate that Catra is morally culpable in every step of her descent into evil (except maybe her break with reality just before she pulls the lever). The way that Catra personally betrays everyone around her, the way she strips herself of all of her better qualities and most of what makes her human, hell even her costume changes would signal in any other show that she’s irredeemable.

It’s tempting to see this as Noelle’s version of being edgy - pushing the boundaries of what a sympathetic character is, throwing out antiheroics in favor of just making the villain a protagonist. Noelle isn’t quite Alex ‘I am in the business of traumatizing children’ Hirsch, who seems to have viewed his job as pushing the bounds of what you could show on the Disney Channel (I saw Gravity Falls as an adult and a bunch of that shit lives rent free in my nightmares forever), but Noelle has his own dark side, mostly thematically. The show’s willingness to deal with abuse, and messed up religious themes, and volatile, passionate, not particularly healthy relationships feels pretty daring. I’m not joking when I gleefully recommend this show to friends as ‘a couple from a Mountain Goats Song fights for four seasons in a cartoon intended for 9 year olds’. Noelle is in his own way pushing the boundaries of what a kids show can do. If you read Noelle’s other works like Nimona, you see an argument for Noelle being at least a bit edgy. Nimona is also angry, gleefully destructive, violent and spiteful - not unlike Catra. Given that it was a 2010s webcomic and not a kids show, Nimona is a good deal worse than Catra in some ways - Catra doesn’t kill people on screen, while Nimona laughs about it (that was just like, a webcomic thing - one of the fan favorite characters in my personal favorite, Narbonic, was a fucking sociopath, and the heroes were all amoral mad scientists, except for the superintelligent gerbil**). But unlike Nimona, whose fate is left open ended, Catra is redeemed.

And that is weird. We’ve had redemption arcs, but generally not of characters with -so- much vile stuff in their history. Going back to the comparison between her and Azula, many other shows, like Avatar, would have made Catra a semi-sympathetic villain who has a sob-story in their origin but who is beyond redemption, and in so doing would articulate a kind of psychologized Calvinism where some people are too traumatized to ever be fully and truly human. I’d argue this is the problem with Azula as a character - she’s a fun villain, but she doesn’t have moral agency, and the ultimate message of her arc - that she’s a broken person destined only to hurt people - is actually pretty fucked up. And that’s the origin story of so many serial killers and psycopaths that populate so many TV shows and movies. Beyond ‘hurt people hurt people’ they have nothing to teach us except perhaps that trauma makes you a monster and that the only possible response to people doing bad things is to cut them out of your life and out of our society (and that’s why we have prisons, right?)

And so Catra’s redemption and the depths from which she claws herself back goes back to Noelle’s desire to prove that no person is a vessel ‘fitted for destruction.’ Catra goes about as far down the path of evil as we’ve ever seen a protagonist in a kids show go, and she still has the capacity for good. Importantly, she is not subject to total depravity - she is capable of a good act, if only one at first. Catra is the one who begins her own redemption (unlike in Calvinism, where grace is unearned and even unwelcomed) - because she wants something better than what she has, even if its too late, because she realizes that she never wanted any of this anyway, because she wants to do one good thing once in her life even if it kills her.

The very extremity of Catra’s descent into villainy serves to underline the point that Noelle is trying to make - that no one can be written off completely, that everyone is capable of change, and that no human being is garbage, no matter how twisted they’ve become. Meanwhile her ability to set her own redemption in motion is a powerful statement of human agency, and healing, and a refutation of Calvinism’s idea that we are powerless before sin or pop cultural tropes about us being powerful before the traumas of our upbringing. Catra’s arc, then, is a kind of anti-Calvinist theological statement - about the nature of people and the nature of goodness.

Now, there is a darker side to this that Noelle has only hinted at, but which is suggested by other characters on the show. Because while Catra’s redemption shows that people are capable of change, even when they’ve done horrible things, been fucked up and fucked themselves up, it also illustrates the things people do to themselves that make change hard. As I mentioned in my Catra rant, two of the most sinister parts of her descent into villainy are her self-dehumanization (crushing her own compassion and desire to do good) and her rewriting of her own history in her speech and memory to make her own actions seem justified (which we see with her insistence that Adora left her, eliding Adora’s offers to have Catra join her, or her even more clearly false insistence that Entrapta had betrayed them). In Catra, these processes keep her going down the path of evil, and allow her to nearly destroy herself and everyone else. But we can see the same processes at work in two much darker figures - Shadow Weaver and Horde Prime. These are both rants for another day, but the completeness of Shadow Weaver’s narcissistic self-justification and cultivated callousness and the even more complete narcissism of Prime’s god complex cut both characters off from everyone around them. Perhaps, in a theoretical sense, they are still redeemable, but for narrative purposes they might as well be damned.

This willingness to show a case where someone -isn’t- redeemed actually serves to make Catra’s redemption more believable, especially since Noelle and the writers draw the distinction between how Catra and SW/Prime can relate to reality and other people, not how broken they are by their trauma (unlike Zuko and Azula, who are differentiated by How Fucked Uolp They Are). Redemption is there, it’s an option, we can always do what is right, but someone people will choose not to, in part because doing the right thing involves opening ourselves to the world and others, and thus being vulnerable. Noelle mentions this offhandedly in an interview after Season 1 with the She-Ra Progressive of Power podcast - “I sometimes think that shades of grey, sympathetic villains are part of the escapist fantasy of shows like this.” Because in the real world, some people are just bastards, a point that was particularly clear in 2017. Prime and Shadow Weaver admit this reality, while Catra makes a philosophical point that even the bastards can change their ways (at least in theory).

*An idea first proposed in the second century by Origen, who’s a trip and a fucking half by himself, and an idea that becomes the Catholic doctrine of purgatory, which protestants vehemently denied!

**Speaking of favorite Noelle tropes

#she ra horde prime #she ra #she ra catra #she ra spoilers #redemption arcs #toxic religion

[thedreadvampy]

Orange March? What's that? And why are they (who's they?) doing it on the same day as pride?

I don't know how much you know about sectarianism in the UK so explanation under the cut

Uh so the Orange Order is a British nationalist Protestant group tied up in the sectarian struggle in Northern Ireland and by extension in Scotland, where Catholics (who are generally associated with Irish Republicanism) and Protestants (who are generally associated with British colonial forces) have been in conflict for a long time over whether the UK has a legitimate claim on Northern Ireland.

The Orange Order are a group associated with the Ulster Scots, ie the Presbyterian Scots who colonised Ireland in the 17th century - they're sworn to defend Protestant supremacy in Northern Ireland and beyond, and they're associated with several other violent unionist factions like the Ulster Defence League (UDL) who did. a lot of domestic terrorism and violence in NI during the last hundred years or so. They're named after William of Orange, who solidified British control of Ireland. they're also fuckin cunts.

the type of Protestantism they represent is extremely unionist (they're rabidly anti-Irish and against Scottish independence) and violently anti-Catholic, but it's also very very conservative - they come from the same tradition of reactionary Presbyterianism that's led to Northern Ireland consistently lagging years to decades behind the rest of the UK in terms of queer rights, abortion access and women's rights.

anyway the Orange March is an annual thing most summers in most major cities in Northern Ireland and Scotland (particularly the West of Scotland) where the Order march through Irish Catholic neighbourhoods making a lot of noise and bluster, setting off fireworks and, usually, kicking off a lot of targeted violence against Catholic communities.

like. I am only gonna talk about Scotland bc I don't really have experience of Northern Ireland (and even in the context of Scotland I'm an incomer who belongs to neither community involved in this conflict) but it's worth understanding that Irish Catholics are a historically marginalised group in Scotland and Northern Ireland, are regularly subject to discrimination and sectarian violence and tend to experience higher levels of poverty. and also that violent street gangs and paramilitaries have targeted anyone living in Catholic areas or with known Catholic heritage for violence over the decades (this isn't to handwave Republican violence against Protestant communities but staying in Scotland for now, that's much less common partly bc Scotland is majority Protestant)

but like. I have Catholic (heritage not religion) friends in Glasgow who have had their windows bricked and shit thrown in their yard and fireworks set off under their cars during the Orange March. last year we were playing Jackbox on Zoom and my friend went very quiet and then said "fuck I can hear fireworks I forgot it's the Orange March today, hang on" and went off to lock all the doors, turn the lights off, draw the curtains and get to the back of the house. like the function of the marches is a show of power to make sure Catholics stay scared of what Unionists might do. they're almost always accompanied by a wave of anti-Catholic violence and vandalism, and more than half of Scots want to see them banned in Scotland.

it being scheduled on the same day as Pride in Edinburgh is probably coincidental/negligent on the part of the council rather than actively malicious, since both usually take place in early July anyway. but it's pretty worrying and will definitely put a damper on a lot of people's days. most Catholics (and a lot of the rest of us) try and steer clear of the parade routes as much as possible during the Orange March since they're so aggressive, and the Orange Order are also like. Really homophobic conservatives on the side. so even if you don't feel excluded from the march as someone of Catholic heritage because of the risk on Orange March days, there's still a definite discomfort around like. potential aggro between the Orangemen and the queers.

it's just. it's not a good position for people to be put in and particularly given how unpopular the Orange Marches are it's a huge fuckup for the city council to let both be scheduled on the same day. like the Orange Order is a violent anti-Catholic hate group with significant Christian supremacy and ethnonationalist leanings (and to be clear we're talking about Irish Catholics as a socioethnic group not exclusively as a religion, but the Orangemen are universally religiously Protestant, not just culturally - it's a condition for entry). hate groups should absolutely not be marching the same day as the Pride parade. it's fucked and it's particularly unsafe for people at the intersection of queerness and Catholic heritage, which uhhhhh is most of MY friends for sure.

#red said