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duke-daemon · 3 months

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hazbin hotel redesigns wooooooooo

okay so. i'm gonna discuss my thoughts about them n shit, putting under a readmore bc it's gonna get long and rambley. sorry in advance for the shit formatting, i'm on mobile </3

just some general shit about how i would rewrite it. i think the premise of redeeming sinners is entertaining but is executed horribly. i also am a fan of the "heaven isn't great either" idea but again, executed horribly. i'd make the hierarchy of angels more accurate because it's cool as hell and i have autism about it. the characters from hell would swear still (albeit not as much), but the angels would outright refuse to swear or make vulgar jokes ever. this would be partially to further the gap between heaven and hell and make the differences more stark.

hell would also be more like dante's inferno (again because i think its cool). the ars goetia would get a full redesign and would be more prevalent in demonic society.

now for the characters!

---

VAGGIE VALTIEL:

starting off with vaggie, or Valtiel as i've renamed her because let's be honest her original name sucks. Valtiel (Val for short) was an aspiring power angel who wanted to be an exorcist. she looked up to lute and thought the idea of killing demons was really cool and badass. however when she actually was on the field for the first time she discovered how awful this actually was. she tried to help a few demons but lute figured it out and felled her right then and there. the rest of her story is relatively the same. personality wise she's more stoic and less prone to all-out aggression. she still get angry, sure, but it's in a quieter and more menacing way. you DO NOT want to fuck with Valtiel.

CHARLIE:

next up is charlie! i had two ideas for her. the first one (unsettling drawing) has her as a mannequin/doll type demon. lucifer and/or lilith was unable to conceive and as such they built a kid from scratch. she's overall similar to og charlie personality wise, very kind and cheerful despite her unsettling appearance. she struggles with empathy sometimes but really does mean well. her motive for rehabilitating sinners is so they get to see their family again. being able to see heaven from where they are in hell must make them sad, so she wants to help make them happy again!

the second idea for charlie has her as an angel. specifically i casted her as a dominion angel due to their reputation as holy judges. she was once a demon but has been rehabilitated and has risen into angelhood! she now wants to help her former kin do the same and redeem themselves in heaven's gaze. again, similar cheery personality, but a bit more prudish in this rendition

tangent time!

as a side tangent, valtiel and charlie would have a different relationship in this rewrite. their relationship felt shoehorned in in the original show, like it was just there for the hell of it. we didn't see much development between them and it just felt kinda bland. so in my rewrite, charlie and valtiel are amiable exes. they tried dating when valtiel first fell (when charlie was still a demon in the charlie-angel version) but realized their feelings for each other were much more platonic than romantic. they ended things off on good terms, deciding they were much better as friends. they are still besties to this day! later charlie ends up with emily (or 'ellie' as i plan to rename her)

back to the characters

Alastor:

note: i made alastor mixed-race, which could be seen as bad by some due to vivzie saying he's black. however, as many have pointed out, he has no ethnic features whatsoever and i honestly wouldn't be surprised if she said that just to get away with using voodoo symbols (a closed religion) in his imagery/design. like viv, i am incredibly white and have little to no knowledge of voodoo, and even if i did i would not use it for something like this anyways due to the stigma the religion already has and (again) it being a closed practice. as such i removed it from his concept altogether, but made him mixed race (white passing) because.. why not i guess, i forgor my actual reasoning

with that being said...

alastor is by far my favorite of the redesigns and i'm honestly tempted to turn him into a legally distinct oc. i imagine he's somewhat reserved, along the lines of norman bates albeit a bit more extroverted. during his life he was a serial killer with a day job as a radio announcer. he took pleasure in reporting about his own murders on the radio, but that is eventually what got him caught (ie accidentally letting slip info that wasn't released to the public). as a result he was sentenced to death. upon arriving in hell, he quickly rose through the ranks to borderline overlord status and is a feared presence by demons and sinners alike. why is he bothering to assist in the hotel project? who knows... his motives are a mystery, like the rest of what he does

(he isn't actually alastair crowley i just thought the naming convention was ironic. however he may have also dabbled with satanic magic in lifetime..)

Angel Dust:

TW: brief discussion of SA

this is definitely my second favorite redesign. i loooove insect themes and wanted to do more than just Extra Arms, so he now has fucked up legs and a lot of eyes too! story-wise, angel used to be a criminal mastermind, hated by both the mafia and the feds. he was a gentleman thief, arranging massive heists under the cover of night while also partaking in the occasional drag show. he ended up a cocaine addict later in life, which caused his work to become sloppier. eventually he was killed in a heist gone wrong, specifically shot by the police.

i'm not gonna go too in-depth on the SA part of his story, but he is hypersexual due to being assaulted in both his life and afterlife. it would be something he'd be working on in the rewrite. his reason for coming to the hotel in the first place may have even been for help with this trauma. underneath his sultry exterior is a broken guy who really just needs someone to care about him for who he really is and not for what his body can do.

LUTE:

so lute and adam are some of the characters i have the most gripes about. the biggest one being why viv chose adam as the leader of the exorcists in the first place. if she wants a biblical figure tied to demon killing, Archangel Michael is RIGHT THERE, aka the one destined to kill satan during the events of Revelations. if she wants the first human to die, that would be Abel, not Adam. and i kinda doubt abel would want to do the stuff that HH!adam has been doing. if she wants an angel related to torture, Dumah is her guy! an angel that rules over wicked souls and tortures sinners every day except sabbath. so many better options...

with that out of the way, Lute is still the lieutenant of the exorcist, who are a specially chosen group of powers sent to purge hell once a year. think navy seals. she's pretty much the same as in the show, albeit more muscular and visually different from other exorcists (seriously why do they all look exactly the same?????) she's a very repressed lesbian who hasn't had time to work on that due to her duties

i also redesigned the exorcist uniform/armor because those LED purge masks are fugly as hell and their clothes don't even look remotely like armor.

Adam + Final Thoughts

i did start a redesign of adam but got bored of it. regardless, i think he'd be the head of C.H.E.R.U.B. instead of the exorcists. he doesn't want his children to make the same mistakes he and eve did, so together they started C.H.E.R.U.B. to help lost souls stay out of hell

final thoughts uhhhh i'm tired. show sucks, it had so much potential but viv ruined it by being a shitty writer and an even shittier person. the designs are fine i guess but they all look exactly the same and are in desperate need of variety. the humor is dogshit, saying dick and balls and penis over and over and over again doesn't make it any funnier than the first three times you made that joke. anyways that's it, i hope you liked my inane ramblings. gonna go vanish for another forty years or so, adios

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rahleeyah · 2 years

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So this is kind of random, but a while back you had reblogged a post about fanfic authors' knowledge bleeding through into the work and mentioned that you were curious about if you did that. I've been contemplating that a little so I thought you might be interested in a response.

First, I'll say I don't think you do that in the way the OP was describing. I think you do an excellent job of meeting you audience where they're at and then building what knowledge you want us to have for the story to work. I feel like that comes down to exposition and you are great at exposition.

That being said, my undergrad major was in English and I feel like I've never been able to turn off the part of my brain that it always analyzing who the author is and what they're saying between the lines. Every author that's ever lived has put their own context into writing so like it's not a bad thing. But I thought I'd tell you the things that I've guessed about who you are based on your stories.

1) I think you have good parents and a nice family. Idk if this is actually true or not, obviously people can write about good families without having one, but there's something about the language you use and the assumption that the natural order is for parents to be selfless and set boundaries and for families to care about each other. I think the parenting in hof definitely made me think that, but also trying to think back I think I thought about it in the two stories with Elliot's sister and maybe hov or monsters or even haunted (I love haunted!!). I don't think this is a bad thing at all, I think just coming from a place of having a fairly dysfunctional family myself I had thought "I think this girl has a nice family."

2) I think you are not Catholic. Again this is something that I think is different about us and so it stood out to me. I think Catholics tend to just be a bit more practical about their religion and it feels a little mystical when you talk about Elliot's Catholicism. To be clear, I love the way you write this. I love any time you engage with Elliot's religion. I just think more Catholics aren't really engaging with their religion all that much. Like it's more about just doing what you're told? Idk I guess I'd say it reads as either an outsider, or super devout and given the rest of the context I do not think you are a super devout Catholic. Elliot is though so that really could just be down to good writing and I'm making things up.

3) I guessed you were gay. The way you write you queer characters is so perfect to me. Like I think people get bogged down in trying to make queer characters seem normal and organic without realizing that queer characters ARE normal and organic. Like can straight writers write good gay character? Absolutely. But do they usually? Eh. I'm trying to think if this assumption pre-dates Jimmy from hof. Was Elliot's new partner from hov gay? I can't remember when I started thinking that, but it's been around a while.

4) I thought you might be British. This one is funny. Idk if it was just because a lot of people on ao3 are or if there's something else. I think you just have a good vocabulary and I'm crazy sometimes.

Anyway, now that I've written this I'm not sure if I should send it. I love your writing so much and I'd die if you thought I was being critical, I just was thinking this was a fun/funny way to engage with the material. Okay I'm going to send it, but please know none of this was intended to be negative at all. You writing is such a gift to me. And also my experience with literary analysis is that the people doing the analyzing are often the most biased, short-sighted people of them all and we tend to completely miss the point more often than not.

🧍‍♀️

I -

Wow you read me lmao

Please don't be sorry this is DELIGHTFUL and also incredibly on point like

I do have good parents and a nice family. And that's precious to me, I've always felt incredibly lucky bc of them, and so when I write about family - esp about Elliot and Olivia making a family - a lot of the time it is bc I want to give something good to the characters, I want to make family good for them, even if their family of origin hurt. And yeah a lot of my relationships with my own siblings informed the fics about Elliot's sister. My mother was the best person I have ever known, and a lot of the time when I'm writing about family I'm really just writing about her, and how much I admired her generosity and her heart and the work she put in to make family something worth having.

And I am not Catholic I'm not anything but I was raised evangelical and I'm a melodramatic bitch with a background in classics so I always go big on the mysticism 🤣

And I am really happy my gayness bleeds thru 🤣🤣🤣I honestly can't remember now but yeah I do think Elliot's partner in hov (Sam) was gay.

And I am not British but I spent a good idk like. Five years writing fic for British and Australian shows and the Australian show I wrote the most for was set in the 60s, so the pacing and tone and turns of phrase were different. I had myself trained to use "mobile" instead of "cell phone" and as many of the other little Britishisms as I could remember and it still crops up from time to time. I also always use the British spelling for grey rather than the American gray bc I just think grey looks nicer. So that was particularly intuitive even if the conclusion wasn't correct the evidence was there 🤣

Well done you I'm impressed lmao

#asks

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clemgreenwood · 1 year

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"I always thought when I got older that God would sort of come into my life in some way. He didn't. I don't blame him. If I was him I'd have the same opinion about me that he does." - Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men

Name: Clementine Greenwood Age: 24 Gender: Cis woman Pronouns: She/Her Occupation: Sales associate at Flowers & Company / undergrad Biology student at UPenn Neighborhood: University City

basic stats.

Full Name: Clementine Agnes Rita Greenwood Nickname(s): Clem Birthday: 19 November 1998 Zodiac: Scorpio sun, Sagittarius moon Sexuality: Bicurious Hometown: Willow Grove, PA Education: HS diploma (Mount Saint Joseph Academy); AS (Montgomery Country Community College); BS in Biology (University of Pennsylvania, current) Religion: Catholic agnostic

physical.

Hair Color: Naturally light blonde Eye Color: Blue Height: 5'4 Tattoos: None Piercings: One in each lobe, usually wearing small pearls Scars: None Fashion: Modest in a slutty way

family.

Mother: Abigail Greenwood (née Williams), 46 Father: Robert "Bobby" Greenwood (deceased) Sibling(s): Gemma Greenwood, 32 Half-sibling(s): Marley Callahan, 32

personality.

+ Hard-working, intelligent, curious, dependable, empathetic, resilient, neat, polite - Codependent, self-indulgent, indecisive, morbid, obsessive

headcanons.

Carries around a pocket-sized bible with her in her purse, not because she ever really reads it but just as a comfort thing

Always wearing a tiny silver cross necklace her grandma gave her for her confirmation

Pretty good at drawing so her little sketches in her bio notebooks are so cool. Doesn't really draw outside of that though

Super scatterbrained. Forgets shit all the time. Has to have millions of reminders and alarms on her phone

Looooves philosophical discussions and finding out what other people think about how the world works and their opinions on religion etc. Great discussion partner bc she doesn't get combative or upset, just genuinely really likes hearing other people's thoughts

Pretty sheltered in a lot of ways still despite going out of her way to see and read and learn and talk about the things she wasn't exposed to in her childhood

She visits her dad's grave almost every weekend and has always really liked cemeteries so she spends a lot of time there

Loves wine, especially red. Hates beer, still bad at drinking liquor

Has tried smoking weed maybe once or twice but never really gotten high. Super curious about it though and wants to get high

biography.

From day one, Clementine Greenwood was a paradox of conflicting information. During the entirety of her mother Abigail’s (unplanned) pregnancy, she believed she was having a boy, confirmed by the doctors and never second-guessed until Clementine was born. “God heard me and gave me another baby girl,” Abigail told her husband. Abigail had wanted another girl because her first, Gemma, eight years old at that point, had already disappointed her by resisting the Catholic faith she held so close to her heart. Clementine was a do-over. Another chance to create a person in her own image.

But Clementine, even at five years old and starting private Catholic school, was already destined to disappoint her mother eventually. She certainly tried not to — from that age forward, a willful cognitive dissonance began to form like a wall in her mind, making space for two conflicting truths to coexist. In some deep part of herself, she never believed in the god they spoke of in school, or any god at all for that matter. She didn’t believe any of the stories they told, or that miracles were real, and when she watched her teachers and her peers and the priests during mass, transported by their faith, she felt nothing more than a deep and aching loneliness, as if for some reason god or Jesus or some unnameable third thing had forgotten about her. She tried though; as she got older, Clementine forced herself to believe. It didn’t work on a fundamental level, and the guilt would sometimes creep up on her in the middle of night, scaring her nearly into panic attacks, but during the day she shut down her instinct and grasped bravely at straws. Sometimes she even believed she believed.

She was only ten when Gemma moved out. Eight years younger, Clementine’s older sister had babied her as much as their parents did, and when she left she told a very young and very devastated Clementine that she was sorry she had to leave her, but that she simply couldn’t live there anymore without destroying her mental health and sense of self. A ten year old Clementine didn’t understand this, and only began to reflect on it more as she got older.

As a preteen, she began to tell herself that one day god would come to her. This, she found, was easier to believe. That one day, by those same miracles they taught them about in school, the holy spirit would find her and she would stop having to pretend, which became harder and harder as time wore on. The cognitive dissonance grew as she split her time between playing the part and rebelling against it. She would wear her prettiest dress to Sunday services and beg Jesus to come find her, and then at night let a boy from the other school feel her up behind the church.

It was partly her mother’s religious mania that drove Clementine closer to her father, but it wasn’t just that. Her dad was her person. He knew all her favorite things, and he never inadvertently made her feel guilty for her internal struggles the way her mom did. He was a rock in a world that felt horribly unstable. And here was another paradox: Bobby Greenwood was a good father — and he was also a terrible father. What Abigail knew, Gemma suspected, and Clementine had not one single clue about, was the affair Bobby had had before Gemma was born, with a woman in Arizona who got pregnant around the same time as Abigail, and the estranged daughter he’d been sending letters to in secret since then.

In her late teens and early twenties, Clementine began searching for meaning anywhere she could find it. God had still not come to her, and now her comfort thought from her teen years — that he would come eventually — had begun to fade. She looked for it in hobbies that never grew into anything, books of poetry and philosophy that contradicted each other, in relationships that felt shallow and confusing at best, and in sex with strangers that only heightened her sense of existential dread. It was around 20 years old that something occurred to her: perhaps she’d been looking for meaning in all the wrong places. It was not philosophy or literature or religion or even language she needed to look to, but science. If she wanted to understand herself and the people around her, surely understanding humans at a biological level was the true starting point.

And she was good at it, she found. With Gemma’s help, she enrolled herself in community college, received her Associate’s Degree in just under two years, and got accepted into UPenn to finish her degree in biology. There was no career path she had in mind, no ultimate goal beyond understanding how humans and animals and all living things on this planet functioned on an anatomic level. She piled loans on herself with the carelessness of a person who has never shouldered much real responsibility, and whose ability to plan for the future had never been very good.

In early fall of 2022, when Clementine was starting her senior year at UPenn, her father died in a sudden and violent fashion. The police told them he’d been mugged, and that it appeared there had been a struggle over his watch before he was shot. Not even an expensive watch — obviously something with sentimental value. Abigail had long ago surmised that the watch he never took off was something given to him by the Arizona woman, and this not only confirmed it but made her hate him in death. Again, Gemma suspected. And again, Clementine felt only lost and confused. Where in the last few years she’d had some success trying to heal from her religious trauma, this brought it all back again. She found herself on her knees by her bed every night praying for answers, for god to give her a reason for taking her dad, and to forgive her for the intrusive thoughts that kept asking why if one of them had to go, it couldn’t have been her mom.

She’s still reeling from his death, and now, coming to the end of her degree, she doesn’t know anymore if it was worth it, or if she found any of the meaning she was looking for.

current connections.

long lost half-sister of @marleycallahan

wanted connections.

Regulars at the flower shop she works at

People from UPenn (peers, teachers, etc)

Friends/connections of Clementine's older sister

Exes, fwb, past hookups, etc

Negative influences who tap into her vulnerability and get her to party and try drugs, etc

#phillyintro #religion tw #religious trauma tw #death tw #parental abandonment tw

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cherrycaskets · 6 months

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religion talk below, specifically about my time studying islam.

sorry, i'm having a feeling. it's really long. _(:‚‹」∠)_

man, sometimes i get sad thinking about how happy i was as a hijabi...i felt beautiful and free in khimars and jilbabs, but the homophobia in all the groups i intermingled with and on the site of a local masjid i got in touch with, was hard to see. a woman from one messaged me about joining a hijabi group who do outings and stuff, but i never got a response back when i said that i'd love to. i think it was bc she found my fb and thought i wasn't good enough or something like that. i was heartbroken over it.

i really struggled not having any muslim friends to study with and learn from. community is always so so important especially when starting out. it's so incredibly isolating and confusing. in my case, i was also getting verbally attacked by my mom at all times for even entertaining the idea of converting. she hates the religion, she thinks fundie christianity is the only way, she hates seeing me covered up and "hiding my beauty", she's embarrassed to be seen in public with me, etc etc. she cried once in the car bc she assumed i thought i was ugly bc i was dressing in modest clothing, when in reality, it was the complete opposite. i tried to explain my feelings a million times, but she just never listened. the stares and laughs from ppl in public was also rough. i've gotten islamophobic things shouted at me in the street, and on several occasions had pictures/videos secretly and not so secretly taken.

the pressure i saw being put on hijabis online is insane. men and other hijabis constantly commenting on how you're not a "real" muslim bc "x, y, and z." i'm assuming it could be like that in physical muslim spaces as well, but again, i wasn't even given a chance to experience them. i saw maybe 5 queer muslims while consuming hijabi content, and they were bullied relentlessly. so much in fact, that it made me terrified at the thought of any other muslim finding out i'm not straight.

i struggled with the strict regimens and rules, like praying 5 times a day, but i was happy with myself for doing 1 or 2 bc of mental and chronic illnesses. i thought it was good enough for god bc he knows my heart and my struggles, but the community online said otherwise. i struggled with not being able to embrace the gothic subculture and horror bc it was seen as satanic and again, made me a "bad" muslim. sometimes i wanted to be a hijabi, and other times i wanted to do full immodest goth looks, wig and all. it was like a constant pull on my heart, allah or my worldly love for the creepy and macabre. it was always made clear by others i had to choose, and i absolutely couldn't switch between them when i felt like it. i wouldnt stop praying, or saying bismillah before eating, or abstaining from non halal foods, etc, but the immodesty and goth in me would be rejected as kafir.

i don't know how i feel about god as a being. i don't know if he exists, i really don't know what i truly believe. but it felt nice to believe in those moments when i was alone, and no one was there to comment on how i was doing everything wrong...the days where i was out in the sun in full jilbab, sweaty, but smiling, feeling content and like my life had a purpose, a defined path.

today i feel kind of empty and hopeless. i miss parts of islam, but it's meant to be practiced as a whole (they say), not in pieces...and not by ppl like me.

#oof #feel free to comment i dont mind #i'd like other opinions tbh from ppl on the outside #jenna.txt #islam

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jiamiuxin · 7 months

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to your eternity review (anime spoilers!)

i just finished season 2 and wow. just wow

i feel like my initial thoughts about it were "pleasantly surprised" because it took a turn i didn't expect it to. at first i thought it going to be like a collection of short stories about the human experience as fushi collects more vessels. i was really happy that there was an overall story instead. i lowkey had to let it cook but regardless i'd still enjoyed it that way

i greatly appreciate the anime built fushi from the bottom up. remembering when he was just joann the wolf at the beginning who couldn't speak and just wandered the world after march died is crazy comparing him to after the battle at renril

i really just have endless praise for this anime. not hypersexual, has action, emotional, good ensemble, unique story. the pacing is overall good too. i think it's one of the few anime i'd genuinely feel comfortable recommending to non-anime watchers; it's not too over-the-top in any way but i think it still retains the anime charm

if i had to be nitpicky i got frustrated with fushi a few times. fool me once shame on u fool me twice shame on me type kinda thing. wah wah wah "fushi is basically 5 years old" like yeah he's inexperienced like a 5 y/o in some aspects but he can articulate and learn beyond a 5 y/o. fushi did some bs later on in the story when it had been like either decades or centuries and i was like yeah yall silent on this now huh. but im overall pleased with how he is by the end of season 2. feels crazy to even try to compare him to the beginning

a little analysis/commentary

parts of the humanity fushi experienced:

emotions

i think he experienced grief, pain, and anxiety the most

followed by depression and pressure (despair)

but hand in hand with joy and hope

desire to protect

disappointment, betrayal, frustration

as of season 2, he is learning romantic love

lifestyle

eating at the dinner table with loved ones

friendship

parent-child (booze man and pioran)

child-parent (march) ((even tho she's his mama technically LMFAO))

siblings (march and parona, gugu)

advancement of human civilization

religion

politics

i think the aspect that had the biggest impact on me is how fushi questions "why?"

why do people act this way? why are we here? why do things happen the way they do? this leads me into thinking about how things aren't always black and white; perhaps kahaku could be good to explain this? as a viewer, i generally liked kahaku, but no doubt his nokker was really annoying and troublesome to deal with, making him a gray area "good and bad" character. same with bon and how he initially only wanted to use fushi to become king. but in the end, they redeemed themselves. i dont know, but i also find myself thinking about when it comes to applying morals irl, there are always exceptions--probably more exceptions than situations that do follow our rules. but when is it considered "enough is enough"? is it right for some people to take a beating just so someone else can have character development?

rest of my thoughts (jumbled)

fushi kinda reminded me of jesus. in that he was kinda there to "save" or protect everyone and how he was immortal [and on the third day jesus rose again]

the church of bennett was eye twitch for me bc of the hypocrisy and it was a lil too real to irl bc even tho it wasn't tho it was an obvious ploy it wasnt an in ur face type thing. like it wasn't a major plot thing but it j mirrored irl too well LOL

i felt really bad for arctic king (nameless boy) in the beginning bc ik damn well if it was me i'd go insane after 5 years of being alone--or maybe he was lowkey mentally ill? optimism or denial? both?

the reunion was really heartwarming but when it's first revealed that the spirits follow fushi i couldn't help but wonder what the others who decided to move on thought of fushi

i hate that bitch hayase

the time jumps were kinda crazy but i was still there for it; besides someone said for an immortal being like fushi a century is nothing

every time the beholder spoke i was like o g a t a (golden kamuy)

#to your eternity #anime review #might add to this later

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interdimensionalmenace · 1 year

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Journal Post: 2/27/23

POV: one of your childhood best friends slides up on snap and asks if you’re ok bc you used the word “ass” on a couple stories and that is very out of character (/gen) for the persona you still curate at home:

This one's long and filled with religious conflict, heads up.

( it was actually LONGER but I chopped some stuff. Still an emotional whopper tho, a I am not doing well today thanks to weather and... well, this. )

So tl;dr I grew up very religious in a Christian denomination that supports very traditionalist views of the Bible and it's interpretation - anti-homosexuality, no swearing, no taking the Lord's name in vain, modesty (not like, CRAZY modesty stuff, just like, the traditional iteration of bodily respect and adhering to gender roles), etc. I've been at odds with all of that since I was 12, but only now that I'm at college am I actually doing something about that. But it's a long spiel.

When I started living on campus in 2021, I started swearing. Having grown up in a traditional Christian household with a blanket ban on curse words and most euphemisms, doing so came with a lot of guilt. (Even though I'd been using the same language internally for years.) That guilt rotted me from the inside out for a while, combining itself with other guilt I’d been feeling for almost 2 years (closer to 3 now) surrounding all the ways I didn't fit my/my parents' religion's definition of "right." This is the non-exhaustive list of things I felt bad for doing/thinking/saying/etc:

writing non-hetero characters

writing trans characters

writing characters who swore even when I (at the time) didn't, and tried to justify it by saying "oh its ok its just fiction" and then proceeded to hide most of my writing in shame because of this

swearing internally (like in my inner brain monologue)

writing smut (and getting pretty good at it), which is how and why Fin and Ev's relationship was the most complexly developed in my entire project for years (less so now)

thinking a multitude of things that, by my church's doctrine, i shouldn't have been (this one actually led me to forcing myself to think very positively of people and learn to assume misinformed before malicious, which are good things that I did not extend to myself)

NOT thinking/agreeing with things that said doctrine said I SHOULD be thinking/agreeing with (this one's political)

being queer (I knew something was up at age 14 but found the demisexual label, claimed it for myself, and held onto that for dear life until 2019 when a close friend helped me get my first binder, and into until 2022 when I started accepting I didn't really like guys and might, in fact, be into women)

That's a doozy of a list on its own without being exhaustive lol but since I've been feeling guilty over those things for years and internalizing that guilt, I've essentially been getting more and more depressed since I was 12 or 13.

( These were not the only factors. On top of moving twice during key developmental years, I've always been a chronic people pleaser and have general (if not specifically social) anxiety, and have probably since I was a kid. But that list is what I stewed in my own miserable guilt about )

Since moving to college, along with letting myself swear out loud I have also let myself relax and try and accept myself and the paths I've chosen for myself. That also gave way to heart-destroying guilt! My stories and drive and personal state of being goes against the Christian ideals I was brought up with. I knowingly lived that cognitive dissonance for years, and am still living it. Last year I was stuck in a phase where I villainized myself to the point of self-loathing. I was in a really, really bad place mentally. Since then, I have moved out of that. But to do so, I chose an option out of an ultimatum I had made for myself:

Choose the church and give up my artistic career and characters because I cannot see myself giving them up to make are following ideals I don't align with OR choose my art, my stories, and the things that make me happy and help feel alive. Obviously I chose the latter.

Which is and has been coming around to bite me in the ass (hence the panic intro to this journal post).

I love my family. I know they're good people. But I also know they would not agree with the lifestyle I'm choosing to live. I know my church wouldn't. And I have lived the past 2+ years living in fear that they would find out (in reality, I'm not exactly subtle. I'm more scare now of a confrontation than anything else because I would CRY and probably agree to anything so they didn't hate me. That or I'd finally snap and I'd get really, truly pissed). And today I was faced with that fear head-on.

In a little snapchat message, for stars' sake.

I despise how easy it was to drop right back into feeling like the scared 16-year-old who chopped their hair off and lied to say it was ONLY because it was easier to take care of (it wasn't. It gave me immense euphoria AND it was easier to take care of). Just one message. One harmless message from a friend I love just asking if I was okay... because I started lightly swearing on some of my snap stories. Like, I read her message and all the guilt instantly came flooding back. All of it. She was just checking up on me, but she also represents everything I've been slowly moving away from, and it's terrifying.

Because that's the thing, because I was such a goody-two-shoes glued to her Bible and her parents and filled to the brim with People Pleasing juice (and because we moved at two crucial ages and I lost two entire groups of friends twice as a result), I had very little connection with people outside of my church until I was 15 and had finally made some friends at school again. I've been a part of this denomination since I was a kid, and everyone in my life and my family's deck of friends (for the most part) is part of this church. If and when I leave, I will be facing disappointment, anger, distrust, disbelief, and disgust the likes of which I have never been on the wrong end of. And I don't want to make my mom cry or my dad mad at me.

Which sounds so juvenile but it's true. My parents did the best job they could with the information they had available, and I know they love me. But I'm terrified they won't if I tell them the truth (and I hate, HATE lying).

But I've been getting better now that I chose a side of that stupid ultimatum. I feel more confident, I'm leaning into who I want to be - loving, confident, honest, unapologetically sapphic and ace, unashamed (mostly) of the depth of my characters' queerness and queer, romantic/platonic relationships. It's been good. Sure, sometimes I still look in the mirror and think about how the ultra-conservative person I was at 14 would probably hate me, but now I also think they'd secretly be proud because they're still me. I still have bad days, but I'm finally at a point where I'm having more good and neutral ones instead.

But today was rainy and gross and I got up earlier than I like, and now I've been faced with someone from my old church Finding Out Everything, so I'd say today is a Bad day. The first really bad one of the year! Wow! A record, actually.

I don't know what to do, really. I'm terrified of the repercussions of leaving my family's church, of having the hundreds of people who have watched me grow up learn that I'm not what they think and I've been pretending to be something I probably never was for the last year.

I find myself facing that same ultimatum: church (eternity, a network, the respect of people who've known me my whole life, possibly making art I hate, never writing my characters again) or being happy (making art I love, expanding the stories I've poured myself into for 7 years, trying to be confident, trying to love myself, going by pronouns that make me feel comfy, dating girls, never having bio kids).

A year later, it has new meaning for me, and it feels more like a threat. And either option can still lead me to very bad places (mentally and/or physically) if they go wrong. So does dwelling on that choice. It makes it feel endless, like there is no right way out.

But unlike last year, I know there are ways out. There will be pitfalls and there will be rough patches, but there is light at the end of the tunnel, and not in the hopeless kind of way. I just might have to go through a lot of dark to get there.

A song I used to be unable to listen to was "Neon Gravestones" by TØP. Now I sometimes cry when I listen to it, but I also wants to get the following tattoos somewhere I can see it as a reminder:

"Neon gravestones try to call for my bones / but they won't get 'em."

Because whatever happens, I will not let it be the end of me. And that's about the only thing I know for sure.

Thing to follow this up: I am somewhere safe digesting my emotions with caution and self-care! I also ate so now I don't feel like shit. If you feel like shit, make sure you don't desperately need food, water, and/or sleep!! But I am okay. Just tired and sad. But that's not new lol and I'm at a place where I can actually try to fight the depression off with a stick which is! An improvement!

Anyone who has personal experience with separating yourself from a religion that was causing you pain is welcome to comment if it is respectful.

#journal post #cw: vent #cw: religion #cw: mental health

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norcani · 2 years

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Remember when I said I would post more about my 2022 reads and then I didn't? Anyway here are my faves of the first quarter of 2022 . I originally had a few more on there but after I started writing actual paragraphs I decided I need to cull it bc im lazy

in order

Fires of The Faithful and Turning the Storm by Naomi Kritzer this was only on my radar because the mc is a lesbian tbh but it turned out so good beyond that. The scope of the story changes so much it's hard to talk about, but I really liked the way the mix of faith, magic and music is portrayed here. Warning one of the big religions is very much based on proto-Christianity but this is not really like, a religious book. I highly rec this duology.

You Look Like a Thing and I Love You by Janelle Shane, very conversational nonfiction about AI, it's very layman friendly so I found myself skimming a bit at the start but as I don't work in AI I still learnt something. There is a lot of interesting stuff in the citations page however like half the link are dead through no fault of the author of course. It's also like, really funny. I would rec this to anyone who is like what the hell is AI anyway , especially if you got no background in Computer Science.

Wu Zhao: China's Only Woman Emperor by N. Harry Rothschild, This is just a flat out biography, and the reason I read it is that I had another fiction book about Wu Zhao's life that I really couldn't get into, so I figured I'd just read about the real woman. This is basically a textbook the pdf I got had like, notes on it and underlines. However her life IS really interesting even for someone who has no prior interest or knowledge in the subject. Also it's ...strangely funny. That woman had a sense of humor and so does the author.

Jagannath by Karin Tidbeck this is a collection of weird (as in adjective) Weird (as in genre) short stories. I think they were good.

Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah short story collection, I prefer the one above as a overall collection but the last story in this was one of my favorite short stories I ever read.

Boy Parts By Eliza Clark this is pitched as female american psycho which isn't really accurate, and I felt annoyed by that comparison because I thought it was not very accurate but the more distance I have from reading it the more I feel it is apt. I wouldn't rec this unless you really love reading about awful people doing really awful stuff and then having even worse hot takes. Like, you can probably get your fill on twitter on that. So really this book is like living in the head of a twitter main character of the day, awful but also a train wreck you can't look away from. The audiobook elevated this from an alright good enough to 5 stars the voice of the narrator (who is also the author) was just addicting to me can she read my shopping list. I know my comments about this book are contradictory.

Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily R. Austin this book is about having really bad anxiety and doing extremely stupid decisions where joining the catholic church as a receptionist despite being an atheist lesbian is only the start. It's not as lighthearted as I made that sound, but it's also not as cynical as the title makes it sound. I think it toes the line tonally really well overall. There is a cat.

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