She didn't just think she was a witch, which I was mostly OK with because religions are weird and stuff, so I thought as long as it doesn't reach the realm of life-affecting problems, it's a non-issue.
She also believed she had friends who were werewolves, she could do magic, the date of your birth determined your personality, because a planet was in retrograde good things were about to happen, vampires started the Red Cross so they could always have access to blood, and, oh yeah, along with her two mortal parents she also had an incubus second father and that she was half-demon and that's why she liked sex when she wasn't supposed to.
That... That girl needed some serious help, but claimed that she was well-adjusted and fit to help other people instead. Because, of course, she was also an empath...
Edit: I want to make something clear that it suddenly struck me I haven't; with all this craziness that she believed, that young woman had her life a hell of a lot more together than I did or do. She graduated university while I flunked out, she found a job while I'm being rejected every time that I apply, she found a low-rent apartment to live in while I'm still living with my folks. Don't get me wrong, girl had some trauma and had some problems. But she was contributing to society while I'm fucking around on the internet because I can't seem to make anything of myself.
and that's why she liked sex when she wasn't supposed to.
At the risk of shallow psychoanalysis I think we found the root cause. She was taught sex is a bad thing so she constructed an elaborate fantasy world to justify it
That was one part of a whole that a never got anywhere near finding out the entire story. With that and her stories of being damn near abandoned as a child, it really worried me as to what might have happened to her that she never felt free enough to tell me.
I tried to explain, "Like, no, that's normal." And she was just insistent that it was not. I didn't know about the believing herself to be half-succubus until later, but when I found that out, it kind of clicked into place that something happened to her and she just cannot believe that a normal person should enjoy sex the way she does. And that is... Really troubling.
It really was. While there were bits and pieces of this that came up during the relationship, the bulk of this came out as we were breaking up. She had been abused as a kid, though I'm not sure the extent of that abuse. At the very least, she was abused by being effectively abandoned. She said she fended for herself, mostly eating canned food she got for herself through grade school, things like that.
I was upset for a while, she's not someone I want anything to do with, but mostly I just feel bad for her. She was traumatized as a kid, she receded into a delusion to try and escape that, and her delusion came to define her to the point where she got incredibly defensive if you tried to challenge its reality. She had said that she tried therapy before but that it didn't work because she knew better than the therapists how to deal with her problems, and I'm certain what that actually means is that they tried to talk her out of her delusion and she wasn't having any of it.
I really hope she got the help she needs, but I sadly doubt it.
Can we go back in time to when this was a sexy body for a man? This is dadbod now. I need the bar lowered back to this so I can have a cheeseburger more often.
Such unrealistic expectations for male bodies. This is always the problem, right? That men are always fat shamed? Yeah, totally, this was always the only problem.
Yes, get angry about a light hearted body positivity comment because its about men. Not sexist at all. Rage into the abyss at people who propbably agree with you by disparaging them for no reason.
Interesting take. I'd guess it's pure commercialism. Deadpool went in knowing it was going to be R-rated, and they broke out the strap on. Most of the movies the article mentions are going for PG-13 so they can sell more toys. That's my take.
The sexiness of an outfit is directly proportional to the perceived possibility that a vital piece of it might fall off.
This basic theory underwrites Stripperiffic clothing, Impossibly Cool Clothes, and pretty much anything else you stick characters into: what makes clothing sexy is the potential for a catastrophic Wardrobe Malfunction. The Trope Namer is William Ware Theiss, costume designer on Star Trek: The Original Series, who first codified the concept.
...
Though Theiss was a costume designer, according to Inside Star Trek: The Real Story by Herb Solow and Robert Justman, most of the costumes — following this theory — were actually somewhat more modest before being "improved" by Gene Roddenberry.
That's a day negative 10 deal breaker. I can be casual friends with a "witch", but being in a relationship means I have to pretend I believe that stuff, and no one can keep up an act that long.
It's as fake as any religion. I mean it is kinda one, I think. I have very little awareness of it, I'm pretty sure witches and wiccans are different, but it's all beyond baloney, so I don't really care about the subtleties.
I mean... You don't have to believe someone else's beliefs to be in a relationship with them. It happens all the time. I work with a "witch" and she's like every other normal religious person. Wears a necklace, has a thing on her door, goes to work...
Nope. You may want to read the real-life accounts of the salem witch trials. Just because they weren’t actual witches didn’t mean they weren’t killed for being witches.
I couldn't possibly pretend to respect someone that thinks they can do magic and is almost certainly into homeopathy and astrology for very long, but you do you.
Now, the girls who are like "I just want to make conservative Christians mad," that's something to explore.
It’s all of a kind to me whether someone is into crystals or crucifixes. Honestly, I prefer the crystals folks. They’re less likely to actively and vocally prefer my non-existence. But to be honest, I really don’t see a difference between casting a spell to get a job and praying to jesus to get a job. The more it becomes a major focus of one’s existence, the more problematic it is, but I suspect that both numerically and by percentage, there are fewer fundamentalists on the witchy side.
I'd also consider myself a humanist. While I'd prefer to not use such condescending language, that's nearly exactly how I look at it. Wicca and Paganism are religions like any other in regards to spiritualism, and can be subject to the same types of fanaticism. Personally, I really like Wiccans and Pagans. I vibe well with their leftist tendencies
It's a spectrum, Wicca is somewhere between believing in the healing power of certain plants (certainly true) and full on "I can make spells that can hurt you because I watched The Craft."
I recently went to a "Witchcraft Fair" and there were so many people from every little niche thing. Tarot readers, crystal girls, candle spells and intention prayers, sex magic, literally dozens of different specific ways people did their thing.
Most reasonable people have decided that everyone gets to have an unsubstantiated belief system that goes into the "Religion" slot and it's not a big deal as long as no one makes it a Big Deal. Reasonable people have decided this because trying to proactively eliminate it is way harder and god-awful than just letting it ride (once again, as long as no one makes it a Big Deal).