Venezuelan Miku!!

Dobson would definitely have uh, opinions about I am Not Starfire, the YA graphic novel making news lately, and how men are all "sexist" for not being interested in it. Even though he won't read it himself, as he never reads comics he has "opinions" about, and it looks genuinely BAD.

You know what’s a WAY better idea that’s got popular just off a couple images? Edgar Allen Logan, the wholesome jock son of Raven.

Glass pendant in the shape of a ram's head, Carthage, 5th-4th century BC

from The Walters Art Museum

Glass and bronze flask, Roman Syria, 1st-2nd century AD

from The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

I have loved reading your posts on various fiction from Christian perspective. I am wondering your opinion on when fantasy/"magic" fiction becomes too much? I used to encounter a lot of people talking about how basically -anything- fantasy was evil. I have struggled with scrupulosity OCD for many years now so I tend to think things towards a legalistic lens. I'd like to be able to enjoy fantasy again, while carefully discerning, so I'd love to hear what you think are the merits/limits of fantasy

Hi! First off, Jesus said: "These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world." When you're wrestling with scrupulousity, sometimes it helps to see or hear out loud the reminder that life in Christ is one that's supposed to give you peace, not constant worry about doing everything right--even if you've heard that before and you already know it, sometimes it can help to hear it over again from outside your own head. So there it is! 🤝

Next: thank you for asking me! I'm no professional. But someone did ask me this question once before. I am having a hard time finding it on my blog right now, otherwise I'd link to it, but I'll try to summarize at the end of this post!

EDIT: You asked me to talk about the merits and limits of fantasy and I got carried away explaining why fantasy fiction is not outright evil according to the Bible. I moved that to the end of the post 😅 here's what I think the merits are:

All of Reality, our world, our timeline, was invented by God. That makes Him the storyteller, us His characters, and reality His narrative. Just like any storyteller, He made up a system of rules for His world: rules like, "humans sink in water," and "humans can't be cured of sickness by touching other humans," and "the weather doesn't change just because humans tell it to." Then God, the storyteller, broke His own world-building rules. On purpose. He wrote Himself (Jesus) into the story as a human who COULD walk on water and COULD heal other humans with a touch and COULD tell the weather what to do, and it obeyed.

In fantasy stories, when a character can break the established rules of the created world, we call that "magic." We call it "magic" when the storyteller brings in a supernatural element to show that this character is special, powerful, capable, set apart from all the others.

So that's what I think the merits are. Fantasy stories have a special kind of closeness to The Storyteller Who Invented Stories, because of that very element of "make the rules then bring in rule-breaking specialness" that He uses.

That's where you get Gandalf, or even the Fairy Godmother, or of course Aslan and the Deep Magic.

The limitations to the genre, I would say, is that fantasy stories are very tempting for storytellers' egos. Because of Tolkien, there's this generation of storytellers who think that inventing a fantasy world with rules and races and magical systems and cultures and, to sum it all up, a whole universe of their own design, is the POINT.

They think the themes and the message of their story comes second to how thorough and clever they can be with their made-up magical systems, or fantasy-race-relations, or made-up languages.

Basically, in no other genre have I observed storytellers getting so excited to play god-of-their-own-clever-world than in fantasy. Then they forget that the important part of a story is the message, not the brain that's capable of inventing worlds and languages and cool-sounding names and ancestries. What they have to say basically gets lost in how flashy and cool they can be while saying it.

But that's another soap box for another time. Those are basically the merits and limitations, I think, broad-strokes.

On to the Biblical worldview for magic in stories below!

"Magic" is mentioned in the Bible. It's sorcery. Specifically, the Bible is telling Christians to stay away from "real" magic...which is basically just "trying to connect with spiritual forces to accomplish anything supernatural." We were created to have relationship with one Spirit: God. Anything outside of that is like a fish trying to breathe oxygen: it hurts us. So the Bible says, "no real magic."

But.

"Fantasy fiction magic" is not "a real live human trying to connect with real demonic forces and accomplish something supernatural." Instead, "fantasy fiction magic" is just "a real live human making up a story. Playing pretend."

The Bible has no commands, no rules, against that. Jesus told stories. His servants tell stories. We're made to tell stories.

And the Bible has no commands against telling a story that includes magic in it.

Think of it this way: God said "do not murder" right? But then in Matthew 18 Jesus tells a parable where one man tries to choke another man. There's attempted murder in the story Jesus is telling: but just because God disapproves of the act of murder, does not mean He disapproves of telling a story that features murder.

Sin being in a story isn't a bad thing. It's realistic, because sin exists. What really matters is whether or not the story treats the sin like sin, and not like an admirable thing. Because the point of all stories is to tell the truth in a compelling way. If the story treats something sinful like it's not sinful, that wouldn't be truthful. But if the story treats sin like it's definitely bad, then it's doing what God invented stories to do: tell the truth.

Now here's where you might say, "yeah, but most fantasy stories treat magic like it's a good thing."

Right. But remember: most fantasy stories don't have what the Bible calls "magic" in them at all.

When the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella says "bibbidi bobbidi boo," she's not calling upon demons to give her supernatural power (which is what the Bible is talking about when it condemns magic.) She's using a pretend superpower that the storyteller made up, on the spot, for the story. Her "magic" is not what the Bible calls "magic," so it doesn't even matter if it's portrayed as "good" or "bad" morally.

Fantasy fiction is fine. There is no reason, Biblically, for Christians not to read fantasy fiction if their only reason for it is "well there's magic in it."

There's nothing wrong with telling a story that has a supernatural element in it. It's only a story. As long as it's not real humans doing creation-worshipping or demon-contacting practices, in real life it's okay to write and it's okay to read.

Let me know if that makes sense!

Beware the snencils

Mechanical snencils

Also apparently Galileo didn’t get put on trial by the Catholic Church just because of heliocentrism, apparently he got put on trial because he was an asshole about heliocentrism, didn’t have all of the evidence he needed to actually really prove heliocentrism (apparently one of the big hangups at the time was “why are the stars so small if the heliocentric math says they should be big?”, and they didn’t have the tech yet to explain “it’s because the stars are really goddamn far away”). Apparently one of the Popes at the time, who was actually Galileo’s friend, actually did let him write about heliocentrism on the condition that he talked about the pros and cons of the theory instead of the aggressive “this is real and you’re all dumb!!!!” he’d been doing. And Galileo, high intelligence/negative wisdom/negative charisma dumbass he was, doubled down on his arguments and also insulted his friend the Pope by representing the Pope’s arguments via a character named “the Simpleton”. And it was this idiot move of shittalking his now ex-friend the Pope that got him on the big bad trial we all know now, not helped by the fact that he apparently burned all his fucking bridges with everybody else who could’ve saved his bacon too (apparently one of the people in charge of his trial was a guy he plagiarized too). It was never about actual religious faith or heresy, it was always just. The stupidest, pettiest politics fight.

Can we normalize not swearing in public? There are innocent little ears around us that don't need to hear these nasty words and it is our responsibility to be good role models for children. We must not corrupt their hearts.

Tairn is the dragon version of a death god and Violet is the only human alive who can sass him

All the dragons treat Tairn like he’s a myth come to life, like the gothic grandfather of death and fire. Riders flinch when he lands, other dragons lower their heads, professors literally move aside.

And then they see violet, this tiny, breakable, puny human walk up to him and go “Oh, for fuck's sake, Tairn.” and he just listens????

Violet has done what no other rider has: domesticated the DRAGON OF LEGEND and made him emotionally accountable.

She literally told the equivalent of a fire-breathing nuclear weapon to calm down and he DID.

My biggest culture shock after moving to the US was seeing people boil water for tea by microwaving it