I'm going to the special hell! WHEE!

[Soulstealer]

I will say I am disappointed in everyone. All these minds in the gutters and talk of tentacles and NO ONE has brought up tentacle porn

For some of us it's the default thought pattern when you mention tentacles. And when I say some I mean all of us.

[RayvenQ]

Can I come too? I'll bring marshmallows

Whaaat?...No Grenades?

[Supermarket Slave Girl]

Whaaat?...No Grenades?

I'll have to sneak those in shhhh

[RetailWorkhorse]

I'm not entirely clear on it myself. My husband has read more of the Lovecraft stuff then I have. Something about Cthulu being an Old God or something. Meh.

An Elder God, I believe.

Dammit, I need some of those books.

Tentacle Porn. Mmmmm.

[AccountingDrone]

I just looked this doll up online and I gotta say...weird. Not my thing, but how does this equate to going to Hell Some people need to get a life.

When I was back in high school, the art teacher was some sort of closet fundie or something.

We had been given the assignment to make a book cover. I had just finished reading some Lovecraft [actually in retrospect, it may have been one of those collections of lovecraftian stories, I got a bunch from mom and dad for christmas that year.] My painting was of a head. The top part looked normal but the bottom half looked like it had been dipped in acid or something to make it start melting, with the melting flesh turning into the words He Comes Soon.

You would have thought it was the most inappropriate thing ever, he failed me, told me to go to the office for making offensive and obscene art, and called my mom to come and meet with him.

My mom got there, I was hanging in the office reading whatever crappy Hemmingway we were saddled with that month and bored to tears. My mom was not overly pleased at being dragged in to school. Mr J was sputteringly mad and was questioning my mom on how she could raise a proper christian child that could create such an obscene painting. The only thing she asked was what I thought the title of the story was, I told she, that jackass and the principal that it was a monster like the blob coming to attack. The jackass teacher said that the title was supposed to be biblical, and my mom told him that she had no problem with the blob coming to attack. if it had been biblical it should have been made clear that it was biblical and not so generic next time. Told the principal that if the jackass wanted to teach in a christian school, he could go teach in a christian school and that she did not expect a public school to be based on religion. As her daughter was 16, if she watched a horror movie and used it as inspiration for a piece of art with a generic title, she didnt see any issue with it.

Next class, that jackass told me I was going to hell for being insubordinate and a satan worshipper [I guess based on the fact that I watched horror movies? or maybe becuse we didnt go to whatever fundie church he went to?]


<please note, I do know some great fundamentalist christians who are not jackasses, and not all fundies are jackasses - it is just that some are so perniciously nasty they give the rest a bad reputation!>

[Gerrinson]

I just looked this doll up online and I gotta say...weird. Not my thing, but how does this equate to going to Hell Some people need to get a life.

Some people are very touchy about any hobbies that don't include the word 'Bible' in their description.

I play Magic (collectible card game) and one CW saw some of my cards and asked what they were. I explained it was a game that you play where each player is a wizard (very generic description). Her response was "It looks satanic. You shouldn't play it, it's probably evil."

I told her I didn't think so, she came back with "Better saved than sorry!" and walked away. I give her credit for at least being funny about trying to force her fundamentalism on me. Well, it made me laugh, anyway

[IT Grunt]

I used to get the same crap when I played D&D back in my college days. Some people just can't get their heads around the fact that it's a game. Like anything out there, you'll have whackos who take something innocent and use it for something it wasn't intended for, but that still doesn't change that the game at the heart of it is just that, a game. My grandmother actually asked me what you did when you played it. "Do you just sit around and meditate?" Fortunately I got her clued in by explaining that it's basically a board game with a story, and she accepted that.

[Geek King]

"Do you just sit around and meditate?" Fortunately I got her clued in by explaining that it's basically a board game with a story, and she accepted that.

I usually tell people it's like ad-lib acting, except your charater has numbers to help define them compared to other characters. Most people get that. Or I can also tell them it's a more complex version of "Cowboys and Indians" style make-believe games.

And Cthulu was cool, but Narlathotep, The Crawling Chaos, could kick his ass. And Narly was just a messenger for things even greater than it.

I always liked the cats of Ulthar myself, though.

[PepperElf]

which episode is that? i'll have to look through my firefly vids now...

but i'm kinda use to getting that hell speech for playing AD&D. That somehow my group was going to suddenly initiate me into "real" magic and then have me worship satan... O_o

I guess we kinda missed out on THAT party... All I remember is laughing my but off when funny stuff happened.

but... when it comes to witches... all the ones i met, were from work, not from AD&D... does that mean i shouldn't go to work?

[SnarkyPie]

which episode is that? i'll have to look through my firefly vids now...

The episode is "Our Mrs. Reynolds".

[PepperElf]

oo i remember that one too.


and... worse than Cthulu is ... the dreaded Cute-thulu...
makes you go insane instantly...while making your eyes bleed from cuteness

[Chromatix]

To say nothing of Harry Potter. Some people - who I have fortunately never met in person - have this fixation that anything to do with "magic" is automatically devil-worship and should be banned on those grounds. Funnily enough, the books themselves lampoon these people in the form of the Dursleys. One has to wonder if these are the same people who advocate the teaching of Creationism instead of Evolutionary Science.

It's worth noting that all the scientific people don't bother trying to ban fantasy or magic-related things, even though the events these stories describe are impossible under scientific understanding. They do point out, when asked, that various things are (probably) impossible, but they don't ridicule it for that fact.

Oddly enough, moving photographs and invisibility cloaks are proving to be not so impossible after all!

[IT Grunt]

Heck, the characters in Harry Potter even celebrate Christmas. Not enough to appease the foaming masses calling them books of the devil. Just because they use magic, they're heathen devil worshippers. So much for imagination.

As far as those of scientific minds, they typically have an open enough mind to accept that things can be possible. We just haven't achieved the level of understanding yet to investigate them or make them reality. I recall reading somewhere that physicists have stated that Warp Drive (or any means of warping space for faster-than-light travel) could be theoretically possible, and some have actually established principles on which it could be accomplished, but it's WAY beyond our current level of technology to even attempt to apply them.

There will always be people out there ready to shun anything they don't understand, will not take the time to understand them, and thus they are the ones who will always attack things if it doesn't fit into their little vision of reality. Like the lady in the OP, for example.

[RebeccaOTool]

Your reply was (excuse my internet speak) EPIC WIN.

[Kaylyn]

About D&D and magick...

I was a Wiccan long before ever playing D&D. Now that I do play D&D I'm just waiting for someone to connect the fact that I play and the pentacle I wear around my neck. Obviously the two must be connected.

Interestingly enough most people that I tell I play D&D have never even heard of it! So they have no preconceived notions and find the idea of the game fascinating. Only time I've had anyone start that drivel was when I was dating my gay ex. His mom doesn't attend church because of her health, but used to attend a very charismatic one, and still has those beliefs. She started in on him playing it and how it's demonic and everything. I hadn't started playing but I'd read through the books and played more than enough video RPGs to know that it was basically the same thing, but with dice controlling your destiny rather than a random number generator on a computer chip. She also thinks Lord of the Rings is demonic, though...