(no subject)

[farla]

Ch6, (Assuming) Good Faith, of Tribulations, is up.

The Book of Ruth involves a woman doing things, and little godly intervention. It's actually pretty close to modern Christian fiction, only without being shit, but it's definitely one of the more feminist bits of the bible.

One of the things that's often harped on at Slacktivist is how the new Christians shouldn't all act exactly like old ones. This would only get worse when you add kids to the mix. If you forcibly mixed families, and if generally you had it being that the new families were stricter than the kids' old ones, and if everyone was badly stressed... The fact they're heading into a toxic branch of authoritarianism isn't even necessary for this to blow up.

The song is accurately transcribed. I was originally just going to use a few lines, but when I went to look up the lyrics I realized the song I was listening to was totally different. So I decided to just copy out a few lines from that, and then I realized it was even more repetitive that I'd thought. For proof fundamentalist music makes your brain leak out your ears, it really can't be beat. The only disappointment is that there's an even more fucked up line in the full lyrics: We trust You, Jesus/And we want you to come back/So take the scroll and open the seals.

Seriously.

I will stop referring to Christianity as a fucked up doomsday cult when it stops HOPING THAT THEIR BOUND MONSTER GOD BREAKS OUT OF HELL HEAVEN TO RAIN DEATH UPON THE WORLD, KILLING ALL THOSE WHO OPPOSE THEM. These are the people the heroes fight. They're the shadowy cultists in the underground temple, where the main character kicks down the door and charges in to stop them from completing the last part of their monstrous ritual.

Comments

[purplekitte.livejournal.com]

Not exactly related, but one thing I always hear about the book of Ruth is that it involves King David's great-grandmother and she's a Moabite woman! They hated the Moabites a lot, and back in Genesis made up stories about incest for how that tribe got started. You'd almost believe it was true because no one would make that shit up. It's also a nicely pro-convert text. And Naomi's sons are named "sickness and consumption", presumably short-hand for what they died of. I'd like to see someone choose those names. Not to mention Mara--bitterness. Or, I don't know, Job sounds appropriate.

I suppose how the children's old families are viewed would be complicated. I mean, if the old parents were raptured and the new parents weren't, it would be hard to not idolize the old parents and hold of up their rules as what the kid should have been doing all along, weakening later instructions by the new parents.

[farla.livejournal.com]

They hated everyone a whole lot. One of the things I've always wondered was if they were unusually xenaphobic dicks, or if the equivalent religious literature for the other tribes at the time is all about how everybody else eats babies for supper.

Yeah, much of the bible's clearly written in the style of folktale where you name people stuff like Healthy, Stupid, and Tall. It's hard to be sure (since, after all, names do have meanings) but the vast majority seem to be descriptive for their place in the story, not actual names.

I mean, if the old parents were raptured and the new parents weren't, it would be hard to not idolize the old parents and hold of up their rules as what the kid should have been doing all along, weakening later instructions by the new parents.

Kids whose parents vanished have some recourse, but on the other hand, they're still here, so you can easily argue that their parents still failed to raise them properly. And not even that much applies to most of the kids. Rebecca/Ruth is in the worst position of them all, since her mother wasn't raptured, she's just dead.

Which means that the way they end up treating her isn't even necessarily wrong, since she's repeating the ideas of her unraptured mother. It's like those scifi stories where there are viral images or phrases, and the only recourse is to destroy the meme before you're infected. It doesn't matter if it's true or not, since you can't afford to even consider it that long regardless.

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

So fundie evangelical music is good for something after all: NaNo padding!

[farla.livejournal.com]

I got a thousand words out of a song that has about two hundred words in it, most of which are near repetitions anyway. It's mindboggling. Adalia is going to be listening to a hell of a lot of music.

(It may also be good for messing with your brain chemistry. The fact it's fundy chants does worry me a bit, but it's actually nice(ly creepy) background music. Does get stuck in your head, though.)

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

You're a braver woman than I. I'll stick to villain songs and murder ballads ("We aaaaall deserve to die!"). Chants written by and for actual evil cults are just a bit too creepy for me.