Worrying about supporting an atheistic stereotype

[tamago23]

"It's 3AM, she won't put out, let's go make out with her friends, make out with her friends' friends... excuse me, do you want to screw?" Heh. I love MSI. They make me giggle

Comments

[pink_siamese]

Yep. I definitely smell trouble there. By writing a Stockholm-esque dynamic where the abuser is atheist and the victim is Christian, you are not only underlining a connection to the idea that atheist=evil and Christian=good, you are writing it on a billboard in huge boldfaced letters and then underlining it. In fact, if I didn't know you personally, I'd think you were one of those narrow-minded morally uppity Christian types trying to prove a point. The only thing that would make it look even more like Christian-moral grandstanding is if Damien was pagan/Satanist.

[tamago23]

It's frustrating because this feels right for both their characters. He's not stupid enough to be religious. She's too sheltered to be anything other than Christian. ARRRGHHHH. And it has to come into the story because it's important to her and a major part of her conflict with continuing to be with him is religious in nature.

They actually have a scene when she discovers he's an atheist and then she asks if he's a Satanist. His response is basically a very condescending o_O where he laughs himself stupid and then explains that not believing in God means he doesn't believe in Satan either, and he's certainly not going to worship either an imaginary sky daddy or an the imaginary middle-of-the-earth counterpart.

[50_ft_queenie]

See, not all people who are religious are so because they are stupid. I'm an atheist, but that statement raises even my hackles. Atheism is, for me, about that I believe and not what I think other people should believe. Other people can be as religious as they want as long as they don't preach at me, try to convert me etc.

[misslynx]

Thank you! I didn't post a comment when I read that earlier because I realized there was no way I'd be able to do so and stay civil. So instead I just ended up doing a slow burn all day thinking about things I could have said... :-/