Maybe Its You - Blog Posts

*THIS WAS SENT TO A FRIEND. NOT ME*

the friend who received this is too nice to say something about it but i have reached a point now where i have seen them receive so many messages like this that i just can't keep my mouth shut anymore

this is straight up evil behaviour. whatever lighthearted tone this anon thought they were sending this with, i don't care. it's gross in every sense.

i'm speaking directly to whoever sent this now and frankly, if you follow me, non, unfollow me right fucking now because i don't want this energy anywhere near my blog. it hurts enough that you've targeted my friends with it.

listen up because apparently it bears repeating for the millionth fucking time -

FANFICTION AUTHORS ARE HUMAN BEINGS. they have lives and jobs and school and things they struggle with. maybe they've even spoken publicly about their struggles in the hopes their readers would understand them a bit better because at the end of the day this is a community and they have every right to use this space however they fucking want to.

"don't start a fic you can't finish" - literally shut up. shut up! we are not paid to do this, i will start and not finish whatever the fuck i want.

and holy shit, anon. as if this message wasn't disgusting enough, please let me state plainly something you "desperately" need to hear: no robot can give you what a human writer can. and the fact that you even threatened to just go to AI at this point shows how little you care about storytellers and all they provide for you.

again, i don't care if every word of this message was sent in jest or meant to be read playfully. it's not fucking cute. this shit hurts writers and ya'll need to realize that.

if you take time out of your life to send messages like this, you're a bad person. period. this is not how fanfic works, it's not how the world works. if you can wait two-three years for a movie or a new season of your favourite tv show, you can wait a few months for a fanfic to update. or you can wait forever. we literally owe you nothing.

i'm done sugarcoating it, ya'll. disrespectfully, grow up. grow up! enough is enough.

anyway

Wait isn’t self-harm just cutting?

No. Self harm is anything you purposefully do that you do that harms your body or mind, and that you know will harm you, but that you do anyway.

“In Jewish thought, a sin is not an offense against God, an act of disobedience. A sin is a missed opportunity to act humanly. The verb to sin in Hebrew is also used in the sense of ‘missing the target.’ When God created us free to choose between good and bad, He also gave us the capacity to know when we had chosen wrongly”

— Harold Kushner, To Life!: A Celebration of Jewish Being and Thinking (via huzzahitsthedoctor)

“One of the biggest problems with religion is that people stubbornly, insistently reduce God to their own size; they imagine that God loves the same people they love, and that God hates the people they hate. This is not just insidious theology; it’s actually idolatry, because people are just worshiping a blown up version of themselves. So let me say it simply: God’s love transcends all of that. When your parents reject you, God loves you; when your friends or classmates make fun of you, God loves you; when your priest, minister, imam, or rabbi tells you that you are an abomination, God loves you; when politicians cater to people’s basest prejudices, God loves you. No matter how many times and in how many ways people make you feel less than human, God knows otherwise, and God loves you. When you feel frightened, or abandoned, or humiliated, I hope the unshakeable conviction that God loves you can help hold you and enable you to persevere.”

— From a Rabbi, An Open Letter To People Who Are LGBTQ by Rabbai Shai Held (via jewishtransition)

The strange thing about growing up in conservative Christianity and then leaving it behind is that there are a lot of secular/progressive spaces that engage in similar thinking while sincerely believing their ideas are counter to conservative ones. So I thought I would just make a list of things I was taught within conservative Christianity, the stuff that was either the core of our beliefs, or the social dynamics that we created. Some of the language I use is specifically either scriptural, or Christian-speak.

This list isn’t to say “stop thinking this way.” This is actually intended to simply be informative because sometimes social justice spaces assume, “we are crafting our ideals in opposition to conservative ideals therefore whatever we think surely must be the opposite of whatever they think,” without ever seeming to know that their language and ideals look and sound the same.

So, let’s begin:

Sin-leveling: x is bad, and y is bad, and all bad things deserve an equal reaction

Sin-leveling part 2: because all things are equally bad, there’s nothing wrong with inverting the consequences. Hurting others becomes acceptable (because it’s no different than doing something distasteful), doing something distasteful is unforgivable (because it’s no different than doing something harmful)

Avoid all appearance of evil: if I assume that your behavior looks wrong, then you are wrong, even if further context would say otherwise. You should avoid doing anything that others would see as wrong because you are not allowed the benefit of the doubt or to defend yourself.

Sin by association: x company contracted with y company. Y company engages in something sinful, which means x company approves of said sinful thing which means if you purchase from x company, you are condoning, supporting, and have actually committed the sin.

Think only on what is good: or as the pastor of my old church liked to call it, “garbage in, garbage out.” Whatever ideas, thoughts, words, arguments, stories, pictures, books, movies, songs, friends, love you put in your head will create the desire to become that. If you want to be good, you must avoid any bad thought because you will “slip” into wanting it and then be unable to stop yourself from being it. (For example, type into google “is secular music” and click on the autocomplete of “a sin”)

Language as an in-group test: if you do not describe your life, experiences, and beliefs with the exact same vocabulary and in-group speak, you are either not really one of us, or you’re someone who hasn’t thought through their ideas as deeply as I have.

By any means necessary: Also known in the ex-Evangelical world as “lying for Jesus.” If my words create the necessary beliefs and actions in others, then it doesn’t matter if I am exaggerating, saying half-truths, or using manipulative language, because I’m saving others and helping them do what’s right.

Touch not God’s anointed: any critiques of those our community trusts, critiques of those we’ve deemed “the good ones,” are actually people trying to sow discord and disunity to destroy our community and their voice should be silenced because they must be lying.

Judge not lest ye be judged: A scripture that we throw at people when someone says our leadership is abusive, a scripture we cry is being taken out of context when we want to harshly critique someone ourselves. 

There’s more, lots more, but this post is already fairly long. Once again, though, this isn’t intended to be combative. I just want people to know the actual social dynamics that a lot of us grew up with in conservative Christianity communities, so they know when sometimes they’re sharing those social dynamics, not countering them.