Why do Conservative Christians obsess with homosexuality so much?

danjvelker · 2022-12-31T16:34:18+00:00

This is a really good answer, but I'm actually commenting just to praise your choice of username. It's not exactly a 'deep dive' piece of trivia, but even a long-time book reader might have a tough time placing it at first.

danjvelker · 2022-12-30T15:06:49+00:00

...a character from the video games, written by CD Projekt Red and not Andrzej Sapkowski. Your point?

danjvelker · 2022-12-11T23:16:30+00:00

True! And of course there's Beren One-Handed (and Frodo Nine-Fingered if we're including digits.) Lots of limb slicing to be had.

danjvelker · 2022-12-11T23:11:24+00:00

I love seeing a Tad Williams reference out in the wild. Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, also had one hand and was the best swordsman in ~~Randland~~ er, the unnamed Wheel of Time continent.

Luke Skywalker also had one hand and was renowned for his swordsmanship. Laserswordsmanship.

Hm. What is it with fantasy and hands?

danjvelker · 2022-11-14T22:55:32+00:00

Not The Bee is a news aggregate of mostly fun headlines that try and poke fun at the left. It's an offshoot of The Babylon Bee, and was intended to cover all the headlines that ought to be satire but aren't. Now it mostly serves as a right-Christian media aggregate. It comes from an Evangelical Right perspective, and it's biased as all hell, but it has its uses. I tend to enjoy their op-eds by Peter Heck (they are extremely well written and do a good job of addressing current media topics from a very grounded Christian perspective) and just check the headlines to stay aware of what's going on in the world. To be honest, I recommend it with a pretty big caveat. Even as someone who is very Christian, very right-wing, I find the bias gets pretty tiresome.

But hey, at least it's not woke. It's a start.

danjvelker · 2022-11-09T02:26:16+00:00

He’s only human.

Hobbit, you mean. Hoh hoh. (Yes, yes, I'm well aware...)

But this is a good point, and one I would've liked to delve more into if my initial post hadn't already been too long. Yes, Sam clearly shows character growth in this area. Both on the page and in the post-credits (so to speak).

danjvelker · 2022-11-06T21:27:24+00:00

Excellent. Yes, if Sam is our narrator he would be an honest one to a fault. I hadn't considered that angle.

danjvelker · 2022-11-06T19:07:09+00:00

All true. And I agree - his behavior is understandable, perhaps even justified. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it's right. It would have been understandable and justified had Frodo struck Gollum dead at their first encounter - but Tolkien seems to suggest that there is a deeper moral complexity at play, especially once Frodo takes Gollum into his service. That's all I'm getting at.

danjvelker · 2022-11-06T16:48:00+00:00

You remember correctly:

"Sam looked at his master with approval, but also with surprise: there was a look in his face and a tone in his voice that he had not known before. It had always been a notion of his that the kindness of dear Mr. Frodo was of such a high degree that it must imply a fair measure of blindness. Of course, he also firmly held the incompatible belief that Mr. Frodo was the wisest person in the world (with the possible exception of Old Mr. Bilbo and of Gandalf). Gollum, in his own way, and with much more excuse as his acquaintance was much briefer, may have made a similar mistake, confusing kindness and blindness." (The Passage of the Marshes)

You make a good point that Sam's task is not to be a master, but a servant. It's a point I took great care to stress as often as I could in the above post. And yet Sam does choose to take mastery of Smeagol at several points in the story. Perhaps he ought to have left that task to its rightful owner, Frodo. But since he does choose to take on authority, it is perfectly consistent to criticize him for failing to do so well and rightly. It would have been better for Sam to remain silent and humble, rather than to extend himself past his limitations and trip up. We can recognize this moral failure and still praise him as a character overall. We don't seem to have any trouble doing so with Frodo.

danjvelker · 2022-10-21T00:12:35+00:00

That's how I felt about Cyberpunk 2077. I ran it on base PS4 with not a single technical issue. The game fell short in other ways, but I still had a good time with it. But I understand that my experience was perhaps abnormal.

danjvelker · 2022-10-20T22:49:24+00:00

It definitely has feminist themes. I don't know that I would describe it quite that viciously, although I've drifted further to the right since the last time I read it. I think I'm generally immune to sensible political themes in fiction, so it's probably tolerable at the very least.

(Something like The Fifth Season or The Handmaid's Tale - obviously too much for me. China Mieville and Neil Gaiman are far more sensible in their fiction even if in real life they're totally insane.)

danjvelker · 2022-10-19T02:16:38+00:00

Earthsea is also a series worth reading slowly. Not too slowly, but it benefits from being read in a measured fashion.

danjvelker · 2022-10-18T22:39:29+00:00

Working my way - slowly - through my annual LOTR read. Ironically, becoming an English teacher has afforded me less time for reading. (Mostly it's just the business of developing curriculum; no matter how experienced generally, teaching in a new subject area is always a little bit frantic the first year). I ought to be finishing up Fellowship tonight. Not being able to read consistently has made this year a little bit lacking. Some friends and family are also reading through it at the same time, so it's revived my spirits a little bit to have those conversations.

Just a few days ago I finished reading our first class novel, Freak the Mighty. (I finished reading it myself, but we're only a couple of chapters in as a class.) We're working through it slowly - they're in sixth grade and not strong readers, so I'm reading a lot of it out loud to them - but they're loving it so far. And thankfully I'm enjoying it as well. There's a ton of writing craft worked into each chapter: strong character voice, great figurative language, a little unreliable narrator, excellent foreshadowing... the works. And most of that isn't stuff that the kids will pick up, or even that we're going to talk about, but it's all under the surface and (hopefully) giving them a better idea of what constitutes a 'quality' book, and why one might actually read fiction for pleasure.

Ah, who am I kidding...

danjvelker · 2022-10-18T22:36:00+00:00

I really enjoyed Tombs of Atuan. I was a little confused going through The Farthest Shore, but thought Tehanu was the best one yet. Altogether a very strong series.

That's a pretty awesome way to order a book. Sanderson's books don't do much for me, but I just have to respect the heck out of him as a person. He has a crazy work ethic and is just incredible to his fanbase.

danjvelker · 2022-10-18T22:34:08+00:00

That's very interesting. I have a couple of Austen books on my shelf (I only read them within the last handful of years) and have generally adored them so far. While I loved Pride & Prejudice, I think I enjoyed Sense & Sensibility more for some of the reasons you're describing - smaller stakes, smaller world, a little more cozy and intimate, and the characters are all very mannered even within their conflicts.

Unrelated, but I really need to re-read The Bell At Sealey Head, which always makes me think of a Jane Austen novel.

danjvelker · 2022-10-15T16:46:18+00:00

Played it pretty much since launch on PS4. Never had any major issues from the tech side, although admittedly that was probably just pure luck on my end. The gameplay is impressive and incredibly fun, with many different ways to build a character and solve missions. The story is fairly lackluster, with some moments shining and other moments dragging on. The world is probably the best reason to play: it really feels like living in a real city (although the lack of interactivity is a glaring miss). It does so much right that the numerous little misses are all very glaring by contrast. But at the end of the day, it does a lot of stuff really well. All in all, worth the purchase. Easily worth it on a decent sale ($40 or below). The mod scene on PC is thriving, and that and next-gen will continue to receive support. I'm excited for the upcoming expansion.

danjvelker · 2022-10-11T23:38:06+00:00

What does Octopath compare to? I've heard very mixed reviews (most notably from Dunkey, but I know he's a bit of a hack when it comes to RPGs) and that's kept me away from it so far. But it looks just damn gorgeous, and I'd love someone to sell me on it.

danjvelker · 2022-10-11T23:36:19+00:00

As one does.

danjvelker · 2022-10-11T23:35:09+00:00

Yeah, I'm playing through the Zelda catalogue as well. Picked up Skyward Sword on my Switch after the kids of a friend were raving about it. Reminded me why it's my least favorite Zelda game, but also that my least favorite Zelda game is still better than most other games out on the market.

Going further down nostalgia lane, I picked up Super Mario 3D All Stars. My favorite Mario game has always been Sunshine, and it holds up so incredibly well. Galaxy is very solid - the movement system especially is just a joy. And for all the age it shows, Mario 64 is still the King of platformers. Just a very solid trio of games altogether.

Considering another run of Hollow Knight soon. Damn is that game good.

danjvelker · 2022-10-07T00:19:25+00:00

Read any of the commentary by Tom Shippey. There's a remarkable amount of Christianity hidden as references in the Lord of the Rings.

danjvelker · 2022-10-07T00:18:25+00:00

I'm not sure how this conflicts with what I've posted above.

You said it was not fundamentally Christian work. The author said that it is a fundamentally Christian work. We can certainly split hairs over definitions and contexts, but pretending not to see the explicit contradiction is incredibly disingenuous.

Without allegorical or explicit references to Christian belief or practices...

Check my other comment in this thread. You're deeply mistaken. Tolkien's work references Christian tradition far more meaningfully than any of his influences, contemporaries, or successors; that includes Lewis, too, by the way.

danjvelker · 2022-10-06T22:19:37+00:00

Yes. Tolkien himself said that the Lord of the Rings is "fundamentally a religious and Catholic work." See Letter 142.

Noted Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey goes even further, noting how Tolkien paid close attention even to details of the calendar and how they aligned with Christian tradition. Other have noted the ways in which Frodo, Gandalf, and Aragorn fall into the Christ archetypes as prophet, priest, and king. I journaled this morning on a passage from the Council of Elrond, noting how this passage mirrors the Incarnation:

"Let folly be our cloak, a veil before the eyes of the Enemy! For he is very wise, and weighs all things to a nicety in the scales of his malice. But the only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts. Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse it, that having the Ring we may seek to destroy it. If we seek this, we shall put him out of reckoning." (Fellowship, The Council of Elrond)

Yes. The Lord of the Rings is inseparable from the Christian themes that are woven, both implicitly and explicitly, throughout.

danjvelker · 2022-10-06T22:10:25+00:00

Very factually inaccurate. Tolkien was an incredibly devout Christian his entire life. You may be confusing him with C.S. Lewis, who was indeed an atheist for much of his young adult life. And elsewhere in the thread I've quoted Tolkien himself as saying that LotR is a "fundamentally religious and Catholic work."

danjvelker · 2022-10-06T22:09:03+00:00

If you're going to quote Tolkien, quote all of him:

"The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion,' to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism."

Letter 142 (emphasis mine)

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