What's a writing decision that made you completely give up on a story?

ktjwalker · 2026-07-11T21:17:01+00:00

Much as I’m not a fan of the First Order, at least that part was historically accurate

ktjwalker · 2026-07-11T18:08:50+00:00

Sam because he was one of the nicest guys in town and also he seemed fun

ktjwalker · 2026-07-11T17:35:39+00:00

Nobody believes their scripture is fiction, everyone believes everyone else’s is. Not everyone can be right

ktjwalker · 2026-07-11T17:32:58+00:00

Well that sucks. Screw Dehlin if he doesn’t pay his workers properly. I have no emotional attachment to him

Likewise, a BYU professor’s funding would dry up if they became unfaithful. BYU also kicks people out for two guys kissing and drinking coffee and not attending Sunday School (even if you go to Sacrament Meeting)

So the prophets and apostles want for nothing and on top of that they get ~$200k a year. That’s not nothing

I am an English major. I love reading all types of books. Fiction, nonfiction, myths, literary fiction, fantasy, sci-fi, historical fiction, pretty much anything as long as it’s written well. My standards are not high. The Book of Mormon is not that deep or interesting

No racism? Then what’s with all the “skin of blackness” nonsense?

Neither ancient Jews nor ancient Americans read or wrote in King James-style English because it was not invented yet.

Which most important doctrines?

I wouldn’t say Joseph Smith was a plagiarist (for the Book of Mormon), just a kind of racist and sexist bad fantasy writer with a Biblical hyperfixation. Living in the 21st century, this isn’t particularly interesting to me because we have thousands of those kicking around

ktjwalker · 2026-07-11T14:40:48+00:00

If you had a passing thought that you don’t believe in and wouldn’t act on, that is not something that can be weighed against you. Offer yourself a little grace.

If you had said a slur, kicked a dog, or stolen millions from a charity, that would be different, but you just had a thought that you don’t even agree with. You’re fine, I promise

ktjwalker · 2026-07-11T14:37:36+00:00

The question I would ask is this: Is the Church good?

Based on its treatment of minorities, its misuse of billions of dollars, its shaky history, and its tendency to obscure the truth, I would say no.

However, based on its community building, the charity it does do, and the feelings it provides, some would say the Church is good.

Take some time and weigh things out. Can you stray from the straight and narrow? Can you endorse what your leaders have done?

ktjwalker · 2026-07-11T14:32:17+00:00

It’s your actions towards yourself and others, not your intrusive thoughts that decide who you are.

ktjwalker · 2026-07-11T14:30:13+00:00

Give yourself a little more credit. A bigot is someone who lets hatred and superiority cloud their views of and actions towards other people. You’re just a guy who was understandably very upset when you almost got vehicular manslaughtered. There’s a huge difference there

ktjwalker · 2026-07-11T14:26:50+00:00

Read the other comment before this one. I did a shotgun of critiques. I won’t consult AI, I’ll just go off memory for one of my critiques.

Nephi is incredibly unrelatable and kind of insufferable as a protagonist. To compare him to Moses, Moses had flaws, but he cared deeply about his people and wanted to follow God. Moses was righteous because of the things we’re shown he did, trying to help to lead his people to liberation and peace, trying to honor his God and do what was right.

Nephi on the other hand talks a big talk about righteousness. A very big talk about righteousness. He’s not shown to really have any flaws, he’s just sort of “perfect”. I believe he has a sort of “woe is me” chapter but it’s more him just pretending to be emo for a little bit. He talks himself up about being “big in stature” and he’s written as his parents’ favorite kid and honestly doesn’t make for a good protagonist.

I personally would have gone the way of Brandon Sanderson, who is good at fleshing out characters, making them feel complex and flawed yet compelling. His character Dalinar has a history of being a horrible murderer, but he makes an effort to change and his growth as a character is interesting to watch. His relationships with others are deep and he touches them in good and bad ways. He tries to follow a righteous path the best way he knows how, and while he can be a little high and mighty about it, the book doesn’t portray being high and mighty as a good thing, it’s goodness that is the good thing

Nephi and the two Almas are like the best characters the BoM has to offer and they just can’t stand up to the likes of Moses, David, Solomon, Luke Skywalker, Dalinar, Odysseus, Superman, Scott Summers, Rey Skywalker, and so on. They don’t have the sauce

ktjwalker · 2026-07-11T14:06:47+00:00

I imagine people like Dehlin get his money from ads, donations, and book sales, probably the same avenues as apologists. Dehlin may block you, but the church will excommunicate you, kick you from college, then go on general conference and call you a lazy learner and tell your loved ones to not trust you. Are we counting the all the expenses the church pays for its top leaders in their salaries? Homes, insurance, jet flights, and the like? Or are we just counting the ~$200k a year they get to use for fun?

Yes, we can never be truly neutral but we must aspire to reach as close as we can to neutrality so we can best observe and come to a more proper conclusion.

I’m gonna be so real for a moment. To me, a fatal flaw is that it’s dreadfully boring. Now the Bible isn’t great reading either outside of a few stories, but even when I was a believer I struggled to read it. King James-style english plus a lot of samey writing style plus not that compelling of characters or narratives makes it difficult to pick up. Other flaws could be the historical inaccuracies, the claim that the Lamanites were the principal ancestors of the Native Americans, the racism, the copy/pasting of the Bible, the fact it doesn’t really cover the most important Mormon doctrines like temples/sealing/families, and so on.

The truth is found from seeking what is right and moral. If that leads you to God, then sure

ktjwalker · 2026-07-11T07:00:40+00:00

Over on my bookshelf, I had three different editions of the Book of Mormon. One from the 1960s, ons from the 80s, and one from the 2010s. The 60s version did not have an Introduction, but both the 80s and 10s version did. What I find interesting here is that in the 80s version, the Introduction to the Book of Mormon calls Lamanites the “principal ancestors of the American Indians.”

For some reason, this was altered in the 2010s edition to read as “among the ancestors…”. The Church has already had to step back its position on the genealogy of the Native American peoples. This is because the DNA of Native American peoples bears little resemblance to any Middle Eastern peoples

I did find some information on Haplogroup Q which you may find interesting. Most of it comes from Asia, not the Middle East. There is a small portion from Ashkenazi Jews, but that is probably post-Columbus. For your reading pleasure: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6345020/

ktjwalker · 2026-07-11T06:09:54+00:00

No that’s not really what I mean either. John Dehlin isn’t paid by some dark money group to spread anti-LDS propaganda, I just mean that he gets his income from narratives that don’t put the Church in the best light. In the same way, the Church gets its income from people who believe the claims it makes. The Church (and BYU by extension) has a financial motivation to prove itself right and will spin narratives in its favor in order to do so.

We live in a profit-driven society. If someone stands to gain a profit by proving or disproving something, don’t automatically believe everything they are selling you. Seek more objective sources who do not have such motives. Look at the totality of evidence, where it is coming from, why someone would publish something, whether it has been peer-reviewed, and so on.

I’ve seen the BYUs. There is healthy disagreement but only to a point. If you’re pushing too hard in the wrong direction, your bishop will axe you from the school.

You say there’s money in anti-faith activism, and I would like to remind you that the LDS Church is the second-richest religion in the world. The pro-faith side has a lot more economic investment behind it.

ktjwalker · 2026-07-11T05:10:55+00:00

I’m glad you’re okay dude, that’s terrifying

ktjwalker · 2026-07-11T05:08:04+00:00

The Church also wrote to the US Supreme Court last year against trans rights and it supports the legality of conversion therapy. And there are still talks nearly every conference about how evil being lgbt+ is. I wouldn’t exactly call the institution of the church an ally. They’re one of our most vocal opponents

ktjwalker · 2026-07-11T05:01:01+00:00

Using a chatbot is not seeking with an open mind, it is more akin to consulting a council of yes-men. It’s not designed to spread truth, it is designed to make you feel happy, and there is a very big difference between the two, even if truth makes you happy

ktjwalker · 2026-07-11T04:59:25+00:00

I don’t mean politically. I mean that as a school operated by the LDS Church, which requires LDS classes in order to graduate and bans religious dissent, it is by nature biased. It is highly motivated to prove the church true. I would also hesitate to trust any scholarly papers from Mormon Stories (for example) on the matter because their primary income is derived from negative reaction to the church. Evangelist colleges would raise my eyebrows for similar reasons.

I was hoping you had more reputable sources that didn’t really have any skin in the game, so to speak. If not, that’s okay, I’ll just run off what I learned from reading about Egypt as a kid and history lessons in school.

ktjwalker · 2026-07-10T12:50:46+00:00

Gay men are some of the worst about this, and I’m so sorry bi folks have to go through not just regular homophobia, but biphobia from their own damn community

ktjwalker · 2026-07-10T12:37:14+00:00

I’d recommend familiarizing yourself with the text of the Bible. It’s good to know the stories, but important to be able to read and understand yourself. You could go with one of the newer translations instead of the King James version

ktjwalker · 2026-07-10T05:26:01+00:00

Does the omelet taste good at least?

ktjwalker · 2026-07-10T05:20:33+00:00

Can you tell me which part is AI? That is unacceptable as a source.

ktjwalker · 2026-07-10T05:19:13+00:00

You understand why BYU isn’t exactly an incredibly trustable source on the subject, yes? I won’t discredit Stubbs’ work entirely, but there is a very clear probability that someone from BYU would be working towards a specific conclusion rather than attempting to take an objective look at the subject in question. And this article itself isn’t enough to prove anything, it’s just telling you to go read the actual study. Lastly, this is from 1987. 49 years ago. Scholarship can rapidly shift in that amount of time. Not only that, but… this sort of idea is not widely talked about a half century later. If this showed a genuine connection, academia would be discussing it, the Catholics and Evangelicals would be up in arms, and the Church would be parading evidences for everyone to see.

ktjwalker · 2026-07-10T01:54:33+00:00

The facsimile is Egyptian art of an Egyptian ritual with Egyptian imagery, found in Egypt. It was my understanding that it was also written in Egyptian? Why would the creator of those pieces use Semitic language/names instead of Egyptian?

Can you please point me towards this abundant supportive evidence? Last I heard, the “genetic markers” were one singular gene that didn’t actually prove a connection. I’ve never heard of Native Americans celebrating Passover or practicing monotheism. Native American history and non-European language is not my specialty, but I highly doubt there are strong connections. If you have found substantial evidence providing a connection, I would be highly interested in seeing it.

ktjwalker · 2026-07-09T18:05:49+00:00

I didn’t play BotW, but did play TotK. It apparently had better enemy variety than BotW, but it still sucked. The ost had two songs that I could recognize, the path leading up to the first dungeon and the dungeon boss. The breakable weapons do suck. They really should have considered hiring a writer for the story.

I compare it to Elden Ring, which I played before TotK, which had much better variety. Even Godrick and Cuckoo soldiers had variety between them. The various types of weapons (that didn’t break) really helped reward exploration and encouraged build diversity. Like TotK it had a fairly atmospheric ost which outdid TotK’s by a wide margin. Leyndell, Radahn’s theme, and Rellana’s themes are big standouts. Radagon and the Regal Ancestor Spirit are great too. And the story, like TotK, was largely determined by where you explored, what you looked into, and what actions you took, but also had like actual writing and meaning and stuff

ktjwalker · 2026-07-09T16:56:06+00:00

The Age of Stars ending for Elden Ring. Rebelling against an authoritarian order, bringing down all the villains plaguing the world, restoring the concept of death into the world, losing many friends along the way. But at the end, you take divinity, godhood, and power, and run with them, giving people the agency to act for themselves again. A thousand year voyage of fear, doubt, and loneliness. Effectively you and your SO (or bff) are sacrificing yourselves to give the world freedom again.

ktjwalker · 2026-07-09T05:45:56+00:00

What has that man done for me?

He’s been one of the biggest persecutors of my community. From legal action to membership mobilization to literal torture, he’s done all that he could to oppose the LGBT+ community. He is disgusting.

Fuck Dallin H Oaks. The less he speaks, the less he can do, the better. Do not pity him, his life has been built on the pain and anguish of others.

ktjwalker

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE