the his dark materials trilogy has a lot of incredible moments but tbh for me nothing will ever top one of the earliest scenes in the first book where lord asriel shows the scholars a guy’s decapitated head and then asks them for more funding so he can go back to the arctic to continue working on his plan to attack and dethrone god
honestly i think he had the right idea i think it should be an acceptable strategy when applying for academic funding to show the applications board a mutilated corpse before you present your research proposal so they’ll be easier to manipulate when you start asking them for money
no offense to melissa mccarthy as ursula but like… ginger minj is right there… latrice royale is right there…. fucking jinkx monsoon is right there… like a hundred different drag queens were right there… like in the current climate, i think it would have sent a powerful message to have a drag queen play a part that was inspired by a world famous drag queen…. just sayin
Their cult teaches them that the world is full of scary monster people who hate them for being so good and loved by god. If you swear at them and call them names or get in their face you’re just doing the cults work for it.
I’m not saying you have to listen to their presentation or try to debate them (and really getting into a debate without thoroughly understanding what they’re being taught will just make things worse)… I am just saying to be polite and say no thank you like if they were trying to hand you a flyer for something you don’t care about.
It’s easier for them to see the world outside their bubble as less scary if they see everyday people just going about their business and being as nice to them as you are to everyone else. This goes doubly for anyone who happens to dress modestly, not swear, and not drink or smoke because whatever you believe, they’ll see you as a “good” person who happens to strangely have no interest in their “message”, and that might be enough to get some curious about the possibility of themselves living in the real world.
It’s sometimes hard to be nice to people who seem to represent something you dislike. Just remember these “elders” are sheltered young men, some of which are getting their first real contact with people of other/no faiths.
They are not your enemy. They are victims.
They aren’t being sent out to actually convert people, they are being sent out hoping that they will be harassed and treated poorly so they view those outside the cult as dangerous and evil and stick to the safety of the familiar group.
You being mean to some teenager isn’t sticking it to anyone, you’re doing exactly what their church elders want to happen.
PLEASE READ THIS.
Please read this.
Don’t do the church’s work for them.
If you’re kind to enough of them, they put you on a block list.
They were such sweet kids, they’d turn up at my door with the thatch of raspberries out front and try to share their word with me, and I’m me, so, I fed them.
Then it was one of the wee ‘elder’s’ birthday, so I made him a cake, and all the little lads came, and they asked about my books and board games and CCGs, I was just a nice frumpy middle aged Jewish lady, I was no threat, so I fed them and made them cakes and took them to the local gaming store and listened when they talked.
One loved yu-gi-oh cards, and it turns out, one of the other wee lads, we’ll he loved him back, so I got them in touch with some resources so they had support and a different way to pay for college, they’re still together 15 years later, they have dogs, they send me ecards on their birthday. No-one figured out I’d.helped them, I was just the nice lady who made them tea and listened when people were slamming doors.
The next one really wanted to be an artist, so I left out art books and resources, my eldest shared their coptic markers, they draw comic books now, no idea why his folks were insisting he needed to be a dentist, but, he’s not a Mormon anymore, (not a Jew either before anyone makes any counter conversion claims).
The first 2 lads were the only dramatic ones, the rest went back into the network but, like Hugh of Borg, they spread the word, sometimes I’d get Mormons from other cities come and make the journey to break bread at my Sabbath table and be seen.
I still think very fondly of that time.
Many of those boys still email me now and then.
Most of them aren’t Mormons anymore.
Someone higher up spotted the pattern and suddenly no more Mormons at my door.
I was blacklisted, for kindness.
So there you go, if you don’t want Mormons at your door, just love those kids for a couple of years, feed them, help them, and eventually, no more will be allowed to visit
It is characteristic of Elizabeth Cady Stanton when she comments on a letter received from a reverend gentleman - who, in keeping with the spirit of her response, shall remain nameless - who criticised Stanton for using one of his anecdotes on Lucretia Mott, without giving him due credit. ‘I laughed him to scorn’, she writes, ‘that he should have thought it was my duty to have done so. I told him plainly that he belonged to a class of “white male citizens” who had robbed me of all civil and political rights; of property, children and personal freedom; and now it ill became him to call me to account for using one of his little anecdotes that, ten to one, he had cribbed from some woman. I told him that I considered his whole class as fair game for literary pilfering. That women had been taxed to build colleges to educate men, and if we could pick up a literary crumb that had fallen from their feasts, we surely had a right to it.’ With a final flourish, she adds: ‘Moreover, I told him that man’s duty in the world was to work, to dig and delve for jewels, real and ideal, and lay them at woman’s feet, for her to use as she might see fit,’ for after all, was not this what men were urging as the proper pedestal for women and the desired relationship between the sexes, and therefore, should he not ‘feel highly complimented, instead of complaining, that he had written something I thought worth using?’
-Dale Spender, Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them
