#cults — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #cults, aggregated by home.social.
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Why Bek Condello left a doomsday church at 27
By Jackson Worthington and David MarcheseAuthor Bek Condello says she has not spoken to her friends or family inside the church since she decided to leave.
#Cults #Christianity #BookPublishingIndustry #JacksonWorthington #DavidMarchese
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Why Bek Condello left a doomsday church at 27
By Jackson Worthington and David MarcheseAuthor Bek Condello says she has not spoken to her friends or family inside the church since she decided to leave.
#Cults #Christianity #BookPublishingIndustry #JacksonWorthington #DavidMarchese
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Favorite signs at this week's protest outside #KenHam's Noah's Ark Encounter, which, on its 10th anniversary, is exposed as an endless siphon of money from Kentucky taxpayers.
"Tax dollars should not fund religious fantasy parks"
"Ark Encounter: Built on myth, Funded by grift"
[I also like "Based on myth, Built on grift"]
"Ken Ham's 'Jurassic Lark'"
and my #1 pick -
"Gilgamesh called: He wants his flood story back"
#ChristoFascism #fascist #USA #ArkEncounter = #grooming #children for #cults -
Secret Society Dialog By Peter Thiel Exposed By Hacktivist; Know Its High-Profile Members
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“A haven” and place of knowledge: The key role of libraries and librarians in “Gay the Pray Away”
“Valerie Danners is in a cult. She just doesn’t know it yet. But when she stumbles upon a queer romance novel at the library, everything about her life—centered around a fundamentalist Christian homeschooling group —is thrown into question.”- Book’s official description on Penguin Random House, to give an example of what got me into this book.
Last year, I noted that I purchased a book during a sale of Pride-themed books on Bookshop and came across a book by Natalie Naudus entitled Gay the Pray Away. One of the key protagonists of this novel, Valerie Danners comes across a queer romance novel at the local library and begins, plus her coming across a new girl in town named Riley, that turns her world upside down. In my post the, I noted that libraries and knowledge are key to the book, with librarians supportive of her learning more about queer people, likely even letting her take the aforementioned queer romance book with her, and pointing out, how at one point, her restrictive parents do not allow her to go to the library. Their reasoning is simple: they know that the information there goes against the teachings of the Christian fundamentalist cult she is a part of. In this post I’ll expand on that and talk about more of the themes in this queer young adult romance novel and connect it to my previous posts.
Libraries and knowledge are key to this book even from the first chapter. Valerie, who is half-Asian/multiracial/biracial is performing and acting like she is a reactionary bible-thumper like her parents, who have been pulled into a misogynistic cult (she doesn’t realize the extent of this at the time) led by a White man. She goes to the library, despite her “friend” Hannah telling her that she can use the approved Bible encyclopedia (which only allows people to see certain information) but she resists the words of her “friend.” She later convinces her parents, with her mom from Taiwan and her dad a White man from the U.S., to bring her to the library, which she calls a quiet “haven” (see page 16) so she can do “some research” for her school paper, claiming she wants to read a Sean Hannity book (a lie). She acts like she is going there to do research but she actually wants to go to the young adult section, so she can lose herself in fantasy. She explains how she was once at a protest against a book deemed “sinful” with her mother, and how she lives to read, with what she says on page 17 making clear what’s she going through:
Every change I get, I’m tucked in my closet, devouring anything [to read] I can get my hands on. My life and world feel so small and strict and cold. I see the same people all the time who believe the same things, dress the same, talk the same, look the same. But books? Books are my escape.
She soon comes across a book by queer non-binary romance novelist Casey McQuiston, named One Last Stop, flips/zooms through it when her mom isn’t looking, calling it a “forbidden” book (since it is gay), but says it looks “pretty and joyful,” and steals the book, tucking it into her skirt. A librarian, a White man with glasses, accidentally crashes his book cart into a shelf, and while she thinks she will get caught as the alarm goes off, the librarian says it isn’t an issue, adding that their system is buggy and tells her to have a nice day. She places the book she had into the bottom of her backpack while in the bathroom, and lies to her mom about what happened. Going forward, it is an open question as to whether the librarian knew she had the book or not, which is something open to interpretation.
Going into the second chapter, she hides the book so she can hide this “contraband,” while putting on a good face, and kept in this sort of prison, even thinking that her brother David is a sort of ally (I’ll get to that later too). It is interesting that she sees her closet as a place where she is safe (likely inferring to the closet that queer people find themselves in before coming out) and it is where she rips off the cover of the book, throws it in the toilet, and adds a post-it note to it, if it is found. This paranoia is part of her daily life, where she is being watched and controlled, with her parents limiting information (there’s no Wi-Fi and the her brother’s bedroom was removed), she hides this book behind others, so it can’t be found, and her brother watches pirated anime, as she knows full well.
With all of this, it is no surprise that she hates the “approved” books about motherhood and being a “godly woman,” because who would like those books? She sees fantasy as a way of escape and reads One Last Stop all night learning about words like queer and bisexual (one reviewer noted that she is implied as bisexual) and sees the world of gay and queer people as joyful, warm, and fun. This contrasts with the controlling attitude of her mother and father which is abusive in more ways than one. While it is a while before she returns to the library or talks about the “secret stolen book” (One Last Stop) as she briefly calls it in Chapter 4, she does come across one more person who changes her life: a girl her age named Riley. She instantly falls for her, with Riley helping break the mindset which is holding her in this terrible situation. The same goes for her talking to Mira (formerly Miriam) who shakes her mindset.
In fact, it isn’t until chapter 7 that the aforementioned book appears again, with Valerie noting she has been “reading, rereading, and re-rereading” the book, while smiling, and begging to ride her bike to the library herself, where she, goes in, as she puts on page 59, and continues on page 60, saying specifically:
“…the farthest corner, in the cubicle with the computer facing the wall and my seat facing the entrance, I get on the internet. With one eye on the entrance in case someone comes in, I start with L and read my way through articles on the GBTQIA and the +. I read articles by the Episcopalians…about homosexuality and the Bible, and how the conservative ideology I’ve been taught is not universally accepted…[later] I’m back at the library. I google every “dangerous liberal doctrine” I can remember being trashed in sermons and lectures…I read about feminism, intersectional feminism, Kimberle Crenshaw, and critical race theory.”
She goes onto note how her parents censor the home internet, review the search history she and her brother go through, and question them about sites they visit. She says she feels “drunk with the sheer power of knowledge” from the library, which she calls the “unregulated wilds.” As the chapter goes on, she comes across the same librarian as before, who wears a sweater, who encourages her to take a queer book, noting it has a “super discreet cover.” As the book goes on, Riley and Valerie “Val” get closer, with Riley helping puncture Val’s impression of the restrictive situation she is in, as she slowly realizes she is in a cult after all.
Sometime later, Val notes, on page 87, she gets lost in books in the library and even smells them, kisses Riley (they both kiss one another various times), and admits she “stole a book from the library” (page 112). The latter surprises Riley, who likely sees her as rebellious. Beyond more chapters showing the insidious of this cult and the forced male-female courting pushed onto boys and girls, she goes to the library over and over, saying she read “every gay book” she could find, whether about critical race theory, her rights, abortion, and more, while appearing submissive to her parents (page 126). She even gets a hidden message, through email, that Riley sent her, hidden within a chemistry paper, sending messages back and forth in the document (pages 140-141), while on the library computer. She continues doing this, while she claims she is studying (page 157), delivers books to Mrs. Miller from her mom.
The library serves as a place Val can be free without parental permission, where she can be herself (see pages 168-170 for instance). She even creates a secret Instagram account where she sees a picture of another girl kissing her cousin, Mira, on the side of the face, and begins a correspondence with her, asking for her help. As noted in the rest of the chapter, she makes clear she is so paranoid that she wants to log into Instagram, delete her messages, even her account, noting wanting the wrong people to find it. However, she doesn’t do that and meets with Mira, telling her what she is going through, allowing them to connect. The library serves as a place of acceptance in contrast to the strict, domineering nature of “home.”
While Riley and Val bond more and their romance deepens, with Riley even coming over for a sleepover at Val’s house, everything goes downhill after David accidentally witnesses (see page 199) Riley and Val kiss and snitches on them, betraying Val, and causing her a world of hurt. He did not have to expose her like that, but it shows that no one in the family can be trusted, how the propaganda can get to anyone, even her brother, who watches pirated anime. It is later revealed, on pages 201 to 202 that her parents found her “queer books” and sketches Riley did of her, even though she had been so careful, believing she was right to be paranoid. Her email password is changed, she is banned from using the computer and the kicker: she is “not allowed to go to the library anymore” and they return her library books, while her secret stolen book (The One Stop) is literally burned on a grill, and set on fire.
Of course, this sends Val into a spiral and depression, with her parents prohibiting her from speaking to Riley. She lashes out at Hannah, understandably, who claims she has to repent and repeats the same cultish viewpoint, even willing to cut ties with Val, showing she has lost to the propaganda. She later gets money from Mrs. Batra, and goes to a bookshelf, where she hides the money in an old encyclopedia (pages 207-209), and she later lashes out at David, who claims he is questioning things, even though he turned her in. She also notes that when she snuck books from the library and googled the conservative canon, she realized how problematic the books she had were, how racist they were (pages 213-214). In a heartbreaking scene, after she turns down the arranged date between her and Andrew Patterson, she says, on page 216:
…Screaming in frustration, I throw myself into my closet and pull the accordion door shut. And there, in the dark, without a single friendly book to comfort me, I cry.
Chapter 28 is when the library gets to chine once more, with Val taking money from Mrs. Batra, and running to the library, going through the woods, and refusing to marry Andrew, no matter what, and is determined to contact Riley. She logs into the computer, but her parents changed her password, then creates another account, and desperately writes a message to Riley, but not Mira, as she doesn’t want her parents to find out (see page 219). She gets back just in time and no one is the wiser. Chapter 29 is the key chapter not because Val works for Mrs. Batra again, but because she goes to the library, or because she is nervous to talk to the librarian who helped her before (she thinks he has “more recommendations for queer books with discreet covers”), and she gets what she was hoping for (see page 225). There’s a message from Val, saying she will pick her up on February 1st, and Val responds she will be ready.
For the next two weeks she plays “by the rules,” takes her Bible study seriously, and everything else, to allay any suspicion. She is able to leave, despite her dad being furious at her, but her mother, unexpectedly is a bit of an ally of sorts, and she gets away. She gets her sort-of happily-ever-after with Riley, as they live together, even if money is tight, away from the cult-like atmosphere. Toward the end of the book, Val notes that she bikes to the local library, reads, and begins to write a bit (see pages 241-242), and her mom helps her get the documents she needs, while in her own way she is supportive.
In the final part of this book includes resources, a reading guide, and an interview with the author. In the second of these is a question noting that Val’s turning point is when she picks up One Last Stop from the library, and another asks what role the library played in Val’s “journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance” (pages 247-248). In the third of these parts of what constitutes the book’s appendix, Naudus notes that during her childhood, books and reading were a “huge escape” with her getting in trouble for reading when she was supposed to be praying, adding that seeing yourself in a story is “like looking into a mirror,” and notes her inspirations, what queer joy means to her, and more (see pages 249 to 253).
I’ve written about theft, acceptance, and library as a place of refuge time and again on this blog, even linking some of the above here. I like how the library is shown as not a neutral place, but instead a place of knowledge. It provides Val with the information she needs to learn more about her surroundings, about her world, away from restrictions imposed on her. This is why Kendra Winchester of Book Riot called, in a review back in June 2024, this book a “love letter to libraries and the freedom they represent for their patrons,” adding that “without the books she reads at the library, she might never have been able to imagine a different future for herself.”
The role of the library in spreading knowledge, even that which challenges orthodoxies, is why some have began book bans and even some have burned books they have hated, not wanting anyone else to have that knowledge. They find that knowledge is dangerous because it challenges their worldview. This is why it is so important to protect libraries, whether academic, special, public, or otherwise, from attack by governments, individuals, and groups.
© 2025-2026 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.
#abusiveRelationships #arson #AsianAmerican #bookBurning #books #Bookshop #censorship #Christianity #cults #family #GayThePrayAway #informationProvider #lateBooks #lesbians #LGBTQ #librariesAreContested #librariesAreNotNeutral #libraryAsRefuge #libraryProperty #maleLibrarians #misogyny #OneLastStop #propaganda #quiet #reading #religion #restrictions #socialMedia #TaiwanesePatrons #theft #WhiteMen #WiFi -
“A haven” and place of knowledge: The key role of libraries and librarians in “Gay the Pray Away”
“Valerie Danners is in a cult. She just doesn’t know it yet. But when she stumbles upon a queer romance novel at the library, everything about her life—centered around a fundamentalist Christian homeschooling group —is thrown into question.”- Book’s official description on Penguin Random House, to give an example of what got me into this book.
Last year, I noted that I purchased a book during a sale of Pride-themed books on Bookshop and came across a book by Natalie Naudus entitled Gay the Pray Away. One of the key protagonists of this novel, Valerie Danners comes across a queer romance novel at the local library and begins, plus her coming across a new girl in town named Riley, that turns her world upside down. In my post the, I noted that libraries and knowledge are key to the book, with librarians supportive of her learning more about queer people, likely even letting her take the aforementioned queer romance book with her, and pointing out, how at one point, her restrictive parents do not allow her to go to the library. Their reasoning is simple: they know that the information there goes against the teachings of the Christian fundamentalist cult she is a part of. In this post I’ll expand on that and talk about more of the themes in this queer young adult romance novel and connect it to my previous posts.
Libraries and knowledge are key to this book even from the first chapter. Valerie, who is half-Asian/multiracial/biracial is performing and acting like she is a reactionary bible-thumper like her parents, who have been pulled into a misogynistic cult (she doesn’t realize the extent of this at the time) led by a White man. She goes to the library, despite her “friend” Hannah telling her that she can use the approved Bible encyclopedia (which only allows people to see certain information) but she resists the words of her “friend.” She later convinces her parents, with her mom from Taiwan and her dad a White man from the U.S., to bring her to the library, which she calls a quiet “haven” (see page 16) so she can do “some research” for her school paper, claiming she wants to read a Sean Hannity book (a lie). She acts like she is going there to do research but she actually wants to go to the young adult section, so she can lose herself in fantasy. She explains how she was once at a protest against a book deemed “sinful” with her mother, and how she lives to read, with what she says on page 17 making clear what’s she going through:
Every change I get, I’m tucked in my closet, devouring anything [to read] I can get my hands on. My life and world feel so small and strict and cold. I see the same people all the time who believe the same things, dress the same, talk the same, look the same. But books? Books are my escape.
She soon comes across a book by queer non-binary romance novelist Casey McQuiston, named One Last Stop, flips/zooms through it when her mom isn’t looking, calling it a “forbidden” book (since it is gay), but says it looks “pretty and joyful,” and steals the book, tucking it into her skirt. A librarian, a White man with glasses, accidentally crashes his book cart into a shelf, and while she thinks she will get caught as the alarm goes off, the librarian says it isn’t an issue, adding that their system is buggy and tells her to have a nice day. She places the book she had into the bottom of her backpack while in the bathroom, and lies to her mom about what happened. Going forward, it is an open question as to whether the librarian knew she had the book or not, which is something open to interpretation.
Going into the second chapter, she hides the book so she can hide this “contraband,” while putting on a good face, and kept in this sort of prison, even thinking that her brother David is a sort of ally (I’ll get to that later too). It is interesting that she sees her closet as a place where she is safe (likely inferring to the closet that queer people find themselves in before coming out) and it is where she rips off the cover of the book, throws it in the toilet, and adds a post-it note to it, if it is found. This paranoia is part of her daily life, where she is being watched and controlled, with her parents limiting information (there’s no Wi-Fi and the her brother’s bedroom was removed), she hides this book behind others, so it can’t be found, and her brother watches pirated anime, as she knows full well.
With all of this, it is no surprise that she hates the “approved” books about motherhood and being a “godly woman,” because who would like those books? She sees fantasy as a way of escape and reads One Last Stop all night learning about words like queer and bisexual (one reviewer noted that she is implied as bisexual) and sees the world of gay and queer people as joyful, warm, and fun. This contrasts with the controlling attitude of her mother and father which is abusive in more ways than one. While it is a while before she returns to the library or talks about the “secret stolen book” (One Last Stop) as she briefly calls it in Chapter 4, she does come across one more person who changes her life: a girl her age named Riley. She instantly falls for her, with Riley helping break the mindset which is holding her in this terrible situation. The same goes for her talking to Mira (formerly Miriam) who shakes her mindset.
In fact, it isn’t until chapter 7 that the aforementioned book appears again, with Valerie noting she has been “reading, rereading, and re-rereading” the book, while smiling, and begging to ride her bike to the library herself, where she, goes in, as she puts on page 59, and continues on page 60, saying specifically:
“…the farthest corner, in the cubicle with the computer facing the wall and my seat facing the entrance, I get on the internet. With one eye on the entrance in case someone comes in, I start with L and read my way through articles on the GBTQIA and the +. I read articles by the Episcopalians…about homosexuality and the Bible, and how the conservative ideology I’ve been taught is not universally accepted…[later] I’m back at the library. I google every “dangerous liberal doctrine” I can remember being trashed in sermons and lectures…I read about feminism, intersectional feminism, Kimberle Crenshaw, and critical race theory.”
She goes onto note how her parents censor the home internet, review the search history she and her brother go through, and question them about sites they visit. She says she feels “drunk with the sheer power of knowledge” from the library, which she calls the “unregulated wilds.” As the chapter goes on, she comes across the same librarian as before, who wears a sweater, who encourages her to take a queer book, noting it has a “super discreet cover.” As the book goes on, Riley and Valerie “Val” get closer, with Riley helping puncture Val’s impression of the restrictive situation she is in, as she slowly realizes she is in a cult after all.
Sometime later, Val notes, on page 87, she gets lost in books in the library and even smells them, kisses Riley (they both kiss one another various times), and admits she “stole a book from the library” (page 112). The latter surprises Riley, who likely sees her as rebellious. Beyond more chapters showing the insidious of this cult and the forced male-female courting pushed onto boys and girls, she goes to the library over and over, saying she read “every gay book” she could find, whether about critical race theory, her rights, abortion, and more, while appearing submissive to her parents (page 126). She even gets a hidden message, through email, that Riley sent her, hidden within a chemistry paper, sending messages back and forth in the document (pages 140-141), while on the library computer. She continues doing this, while she claims she is studying (page 157), delivers books to Mrs. Miller from her mom.
The library serves as a place Val can be free without parental permission, where she can be herself (see pages 168-170 for instance). She even creates a secret Instagram account where she sees a picture of another girl kissing her cousin, Mira, on the side of the face, and begins a correspondence with her, asking for her help. As noted in the rest of the chapter, she makes clear she is so paranoid that she wants to log into Instagram, delete her messages, even her account, noting wanting the wrong people to find it. However, she doesn’t do that and meets with Mira, telling her what she is going through, allowing them to connect. The library serves as a place of acceptance in contrast to the strict, domineering nature of “home.”
While Riley and Val bond more and their romance deepens, with Riley even coming over for a sleepover at Val’s house, everything goes downhill after David accidentally witnesses (see page 199) Riley and Val kiss and snitches on them, betraying Val, and causing her a world of hurt. He did not have to expose her like that, but it shows that no one in the family can be trusted, how the propaganda can get to anyone, even her brother, who watches pirated anime. It is later revealed, on pages 201 to 202 that her parents found her “queer books” and sketches Riley did of her, even though she had been so careful, believing she was right to be paranoid. Her email password is changed, she is banned from using the computer and the kicker: she is “not allowed to go to the library anymore” and they return her library books, while her secret stolen book (The One Stop) is literally burned on a grill, and set on fire.
Of course, this sends Val into a spiral and depression, with her parents prohibiting her from speaking to Riley. She lashes out at Hannah, understandably, who claims she has to repent and repeats the same cultish viewpoint, even willing to cut ties with Val, showing she has lost to the propaganda. She later gets money from Mrs. Batra, and goes to a bookshelf, where she hides the money in an old encyclopedia (pages 207-209), and she later lashes out at David, who claims he is questioning things, even though he turned her in. She also notes that when she snuck books from the library and googled the conservative canon, she realized how problematic the books she had were, how racist they were (pages 213-214). In a heartbreaking scene, after she turns down the arranged date between her and Andrew Patterson, she says, on page 216:
…Screaming in frustration, I throw myself into my closet and pull the accordion door shut. And there, in the dark, without a single friendly book to comfort me, I cry.
Chapter 28 is when the library gets to chine once more, with Val taking money from Mrs. Batra, and running to the library, going through the woods, and refusing to marry Andrew, no matter what, and is determined to contact Riley. She logs into the computer, but her parents changed her password, then creates another account, and desperately writes a message to Riley, but not Mira, as she doesn’t want her parents to find out (see page 219). She gets back just in time and no one is the wiser. Chapter 29 is the key chapter not because Val works for Mrs. Batra again, but because she goes to the library, or because she is nervous to talk to the librarian who helped her before (she thinks he has “more recommendations for queer books with discreet covers”), and she gets what she was hoping for (see page 225). There’s a message from Val, saying she will pick her up on February 1st, and Val responds she will be ready.
For the next two weeks she plays “by the rules,” takes her Bible study seriously, and everything else, to allay any suspicion. She is able to leave, despite her dad being furious at her, but her mother, unexpectedly is a bit of an ally of sorts, and she gets away. She gets her sort-of happily-ever-after with Riley, as they live together, even if money is tight, away from the cult-like atmosphere. Toward the end of the book, Val notes that she bikes to the local library, reads, and begins to write a bit (see pages 241-242), and her mom helps her get the documents she needs, while in her own way she is supportive.
In the final part of this book includes resources, a reading guide, and an interview with the author. In the second of these is a question noting that Val’s turning point is when she picks up One Last Stop from the library, and another asks what role the library played in Val’s “journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance” (pages 247-248). In the third of these parts of what constitutes the book’s appendix, Naudus notes that during her childhood, books and reading were a “huge escape” with her getting in trouble for reading when she was supposed to be praying, adding that seeing yourself in a story is “like looking into a mirror,” and notes her inspirations, what queer joy means to her, and more (see pages 249 to 253).
I’ve written about theft, acceptance, and library as a place of refuge time and again on this blog, even linking some of the above here. I like how the library is shown as not a neutral place, but instead a place of knowledge. It provides Val with the information she needs to learn more about her surroundings, about her world, away from restrictions imposed on her. This is why Kendra Winchester of Book Riot called, in a review back in June 2024, this book a “love letter to libraries and the freedom they represent for their patrons,” adding that “without the books she reads at the library, she might never have been able to imagine a different future for herself.”
The role of the library in spreading knowledge, even that which challenges orthodoxies, is why some have began book bans and even some have burned books they have hated, not wanting anyone else to have that knowledge. They find that knowledge is dangerous because it challenges their worldview. This is why it is so important to protect libraries, whether academic, special, public, or otherwise, from attack by governments, individuals, and groups.
© 2025-2026 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.
#abusiveRelationships #arson #AsianAmerican #bookBurning #books #Bookshop #censorship #Christianity #cults #family #GayThePrayAway #informationProvider #lateBooks #lesbians #LGBTQ #librariesAreContested #librariesAreNotNeutral #libraryAsRefuge #libraryProperty #maleLibrarians #misogyny #OneLastStop #propaganda #quiet #reading #religion #restrictions #socialMedia #TaiwanesePatrons #theft #WhiteMen #WiFi -
“A haven” and place of knowledge: The key role of libraries and librarians in “Gay the Pray Away”
“Valerie Danners is in a cult. She just doesn’t know it yet. But when she stumbles upon a queer romance novel at the library, everything about her life—centered around a fundamentalist Christian homeschooling group —is thrown into question.”- Book’s official description on Penguin Random House, to give an example of what got me into this book.
Last year, I noted that I purchased a book during a sale of Pride-themed books on Bookshop and came across a book by Natalie Naudus entitled Gay the Pray Away. One of the key protagonists of this novel, Valerie Danners comes across a queer romance novel at the local library and begins, plus her coming across a new girl in town named Riley, that turns her world upside down. In my post the, I noted that libraries and knowledge are key to the book, with librarians supportive of her learning more about queer people, likely even letting her take the aforementioned queer romance book with her, and pointing out, how at one point, her restrictive parents do not allow her to go to the library. Their reasoning is simple: they know that the information there goes against the teachings of the Christian fundamentalist cult she is a part of. In this post I’ll expand on that and talk about more of the themes in this queer young adult romance novel and connect it to my previous posts.
Libraries and knowledge are key to this book even from the first chapter. Valerie, who is half-Asian/multiracial/biracial is performing and acting like she is a reactionary bible-thumper like her parents, who have been pulled into a misogynistic cult (she doesn’t realize the extent of this at the time) led by a White man. She goes to the library, despite her “friend” Hannah telling her that she can use the approved Bible encyclopedia (which only allows people to see certain information) but she resists the words of her “friend.” She later convinces her parents, with her mom from Taiwan and her dad a White man from the U.S., to bring her to the library, which she calls a quiet “haven” (see page 16) so she can do “some research” for her school paper, claiming she wants to read a Sean Hannity book (a lie). She acts like she is going there to do research but she actually wants to go to the young adult section, so she can lose herself in fantasy. She explains how she was once at a protest against a book deemed “sinful” with her mother, and how she lives to read, with what she says on page 17 making clear what’s she going through:
Every change I get, I’m tucked in my closet, devouring anything [to read] I can get my hands on. My life and world feel so small and strict and cold. I see the same people all the time who believe the same things, dress the same, talk the same, look the same. But books? Books are my escape.
She soon comes across a book by queer non-binary romance novelist Casey McQuiston, named One Last Stop, flips/zooms through it when her mom isn’t looking, calling it a “forbidden” book (since it is gay), but says it looks “pretty and joyful,” and steals the book, tucking it into her skirt. A librarian, a White man with glasses, accidentally crashes his book cart into a shelf, and while she thinks she will get caught as the alarm goes off, the librarian says it isn’t an issue, adding that their system is buggy and tells her to have a nice day. She places the book she had into the bottom of her backpack while in the bathroom, and lies to her mom about what happened. Going forward, it is an open question as to whether the librarian knew she had the book or not, which is something open to interpretation.
Going into the second chapter, she hides the book so she can hide this “contraband,” while putting on a good face, and kept in this sort of prison, even thinking that her brother David is a sort of ally (I’ll get to that later too). It is interesting that she sees her closet as a place where she is safe (likely inferring to the closet that queer people find themselves in before coming out) and it is where she rips off the cover of the book, throws it in the toilet, and adds a post-it note to it, if it is found. This paranoia is part of her daily life, where she is being watched and controlled, with her parents limiting information (there’s no Wi-Fi and the her brother’s bedroom was removed), she hides this book behind others, so it can’t be found, and her brother watches pirated anime, as she knows full well.
With all of this, it is no surprise that she hates the “approved” books about motherhood and being a “godly woman,” because who would like those books? She sees fantasy as a way of escape and reads One Last Stop all night learning about words like queer and bisexual (one reviewer noted that she is implied as bisexual) and sees the world of gay and queer people as joyful, warm, and fun. This contrasts with the controlling attitude of her mother and father which is abusive in more ways than one. While it is a while before she returns to the library or talks about the “secret stolen book” (One Last Stop) as she briefly calls it in Chapter 4, she does come across one more person who changes her life: a girl her age named Riley. She instantly falls for her, with Riley helping break the mindset which is holding her in this terrible situation. The same goes for her talking to Mira (formerly Miriam) who shakes her mindset.
In fact, it isn’t until chapter 7 that the aforementioned book appears again, with Valerie noting she has been “reading, rereading, and re-rereading” the book, while smiling, and begging to ride her bike to the library herself, where she, goes in, as she puts on page 59, and continues on page 60, saying specifically:
“…the farthest corner, in the cubicle with the computer facing the wall and my seat facing the entrance, I get on the internet. With one eye on the entrance in case someone comes in, I start with L and read my way through articles on the GBTQIA and the +. I read articles by the Episcopalians…about homosexuality and the Bible, and how the conservative ideology I’ve been taught is not universally accepted…[later] I’m back at the library. I google every “dangerous liberal doctrine” I can remember being trashed in sermons and lectures…I read about feminism, intersectional feminism, Kimberle Crenshaw, and critical race theory.”
She goes onto note how her parents censor the home internet, review the search history she and her brother go through, and question them about sites they visit. She says she feels “drunk with the sheer power of knowledge” from the library, which she calls the “unregulated wilds.” As the chapter goes on, she comes across the same librarian as before, who wears a sweater, who encourages her to take a queer book, noting it has a “super discreet cover.” As the book goes on, Riley and Valerie “Val” get closer, with Riley helping puncture Val’s impression of the restrictive situation she is in, as she slowly realizes she is in a cult after all.
Sometime later, Val notes, on page 87, she gets lost in books in the library and even smells them, kisses Riley (they both kiss one another various times), and admits she “stole a book from the library” (page 112). The latter surprises Riley, who likely sees her as rebellious. Beyond more chapters showing the insidious of this cult and the forced male-female courting pushed onto boys and girls, she goes to the library over and over, saying she read “every gay book” she could find, whether about critical race theory, her rights, abortion, and more, while appearing submissive to her parents (page 126). She even gets a hidden message, through email, that Riley sent her, hidden within a chemistry paper, sending messages back and forth in the document (pages 140-141), while on the library computer. She continues doing this, while she claims she is studying (page 157), delivers books to Mrs. Miller from her mom.
The library serves as a place Val can be free without parental permission, where she can be herself (see pages 168-170 for instance). She even creates a secret Instagram account where she sees a picture of another girl kissing her cousin, Mira, on the side of the face, and begins a correspondence with her, asking for her help. As noted in the rest of the chapter, she makes clear she is so paranoid that she wants to log into Instagram, delete her messages, even her account, noting wanting the wrong people to find it. However, she doesn’t do that and meets with Mira, telling her what she is going through, allowing them to connect. The library serves as a place of acceptance in contrast to the strict, domineering nature of “home.”
While Riley and Val bond more and their romance deepens, with Riley even coming over for a sleepover at Val’s house, everything goes downhill after David accidentally witnesses (see page 199) Riley and Val kiss and snitches on them, betraying Val, and causing her a world of hurt. He did not have to expose her like that, but it shows that no one in the family can be trusted, how the propaganda can get to anyone, even her brother, who watches pirated anime. It is later revealed, on pages 201 to 202 that her parents found her “queer books” and sketches Riley did of her, even though she had been so careful, believing she was right to be paranoid. Her email password is changed, she is banned from using the computer and the kicker: she is “not allowed to go to the library anymore” and they return her library books, while her secret stolen book (The One Stop) is literally burned on a grill, and set on fire.
Of course, this sends Val into a spiral and depression, with her parents prohibiting her from speaking to Riley. She lashes out at Hannah, understandably, who claims she has to repent and repeats the same cultish viewpoint, even willing to cut ties with Val, showing she has lost to the propaganda. She later gets money from Mrs. Batra, and goes to a bookshelf, where she hides the money in an old encyclopedia (pages 207-209), and she later lashes out at David, who claims he is questioning things, even though he turned her in. She also notes that when she snuck books from the library and googled the conservative canon, she realized how problematic the books she had were, how racist they were (pages 213-214). In a heartbreaking scene, after she turns down the arranged date between her and Andrew Patterson, she says, on page 216:
…Screaming in frustration, I throw myself into my closet and pull the accordion door shut. And there, in the dark, without a single friendly book to comfort me, I cry.
Chapter 28 is when the library gets to chine once more, with Val taking money from Mrs. Batra, and running to the library, going through the woods, and refusing to marry Andrew, no matter what, and is determined to contact Riley. She logs into the computer, but her parents changed her password, then creates another account, and desperately writes a message to Riley, but not Mira, as she doesn’t want her parents to find out (see page 219). She gets back just in time and no one is the wiser. Chapter 29 is the key chapter not because Val works for Mrs. Batra again, but because she goes to the library, or because she is nervous to talk to the librarian who helped her before (she thinks he has “more recommendations for queer books with discreet covers”), and she gets what she was hoping for (see page 225). There’s a message from Val, saying she will pick her up on February 1st, and Val responds she will be ready.
For the next two weeks she plays “by the rules,” takes her Bible study seriously, and everything else, to allay any suspicion. She is able to leave, despite her dad being furious at her, but her mother, unexpectedly is a bit of an ally of sorts, and she gets away. She gets her sort-of happily-ever-after with Riley, as they live together, even if money is tight, away from the cult-like atmosphere. Toward the end of the book, Val notes that she bikes to the local library, reads, and begins to write a bit (see pages 241-242), and her mom helps her get the documents she needs, while in her own way she is supportive.
In the final part of this book includes resources, a reading guide, and an interview with the author. In the second of these is a question noting that Val’s turning point is when she picks up One Last Stop from the library, and another asks what role the library played in Val’s “journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance” (pages 247-248). In the third of these parts of what constitutes the book’s appendix, Naudus notes that during her childhood, books and reading were a “huge escape” with her getting in trouble for reading when she was supposed to be praying, adding that seeing yourself in a story is “like looking into a mirror,” and notes her inspirations, what queer joy means to her, and more (see pages 249 to 253).
I’ve written about theft, acceptance, and library as a place of refuge time and again on this blog, even linking some of the above here. I like how the library is shown as not a neutral place, but instead a place of knowledge. It provides Val with the information she needs to learn more about her surroundings, about her world, away from restrictions imposed on her. This is why Kendra Winchester of Book Riot called, in a review back in June 2024, this book a “love letter to libraries and the freedom they represent for their patrons,” adding that “without the books she reads at the library, she might never have been able to imagine a different future for herself.”
The role of the library in spreading knowledge, even that which challenges orthodoxies, is why some have began book bans and even some have burned books they have hated, not wanting anyone else to have that knowledge. They find that knowledge is dangerous because it challenges their worldview. This is why it is so important to protect libraries, whether academic, special, public, or otherwise, from attack by governments, individuals, and groups.
© 2025-2026 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.
#abusiveRelationships #arson #AsianAmerican #bookBurning #books #Bookshop #censorship #Christianity #cults #family #GayThePrayAway #informationProvider #lateBooks #lesbians #LGBTQ #librariesAreContested #librariesAreNotNeutral #libraryAsRefuge #libraryProperty #maleLibrarians #misogyny #OneLastStop #propaganda #quiet #reading #religion #restrictions #socialMedia #TaiwanesePatrons #theft #WhiteMen #WiFi -
“A haven” and place of knowledge: The key role of libraries and librarians in “Gay the Pray Away”
“Valerie Danners is in a cult. She just doesn’t know it yet. But when she stumbles upon a queer romance novel at the library, everything about her life—centered around a fundamentalist Christian homeschooling group —is thrown into question.”- Book’s official description on Penguin Random House, to give an example of what got me into this book.
Last year, I noted that I purchased a book during a sale of Pride-themed books on Bookshop and came across a book by Natalie Naudus entitled Gay the Pray Away. One of the key protagonists of this novel, Valerie Danners comes across a queer romance novel at the local library and begins, plus her coming across a new girl in town named Riley, that turns her world upside down. In my post the, I noted that libraries and knowledge are key to the book, with librarians supportive of her learning more about queer people, likely even letting her take the aforementioned queer romance book with her, and pointing out, how at one point, her restrictive parents do not allow her to go to the library. Their reasoning is simple: they know that the information there goes against the teachings of the Christian fundamentalist cult she is a part of. In this post I’ll expand on that and talk about more of the themes in this queer young adult romance novel and connect it to my previous posts.
Libraries and knowledge are key to this book even from the first chapter. Valerie, who is half-Asian/multiracial/biracial is performing and acting like she is a reactionary bible-thumper like her parents, who have been pulled into a misogynistic cult (she doesn’t realize the extent of this at the time) led by a White man. She goes to the library, despite her “friend” Hannah telling her that she can use the approved Bible encyclopedia (which only allows people to see certain information) but she resists the words of her “friend.” She later convinces her parents, with her mom from Taiwan and her dad a White man from the U.S., to bring her to the library, which she calls a quiet “haven” (see page 16) so she can do “some research” for her school paper, claiming she wants to read a Sean Hannity book (a lie). She acts like she is going there to do research but she actually wants to go to the young adult section, so she can lose herself in fantasy. She explains how she was once at a protest against a book deemed “sinful” with her mother, and how she lives to read, with what she says on page 17 making clear what’s she going through:
Every change I get, I’m tucked in my closet, devouring anything [to read] I can get my hands on. My life and world feel so small and strict and cold. I see the same people all the time who believe the same things, dress the same, talk the same, look the same. But books? Books are my escape.
She soon comes across a book by queer non-binary romance novelist Casey McQuiston, named One Last Stop, flips/zooms through it when her mom isn’t looking, calling it a “forbidden” book (since it is gay), but says it looks “pretty and joyful,” and steals the book, tucking it into her skirt. A librarian, a White man with glasses, accidentally crashes his book cart into a shelf, and while she thinks she will get caught as the alarm goes off, the librarian says it isn’t an issue, adding that their system is buggy and tells her to have a nice day. She places the book she had into the bottom of her backpack while in the bathroom, and lies to her mom about what happened. Going forward, it is an open question as to whether the librarian knew she had the book or not, which is something open to interpretation.
Going into the second chapter, she hides the book so she can hide this “contraband,” while putting on a good face, and kept in this sort of prison, even thinking that her brother David is a sort of ally (I’ll get to that later too). It is interesting that she sees her closet as a place where she is safe (likely inferring to the closet that queer people find themselves in before coming out) and it is where she rips off the cover of the book, throws it in the toilet, and adds a post-it note to it, if it is found. This paranoia is part of her daily life, where she is being watched and controlled, with her parents limiting information (there’s no Wi-Fi and the her brother’s bedroom was removed), she hides this book behind others, so it can’t be found, and her brother watches pirated anime, as she knows full well.
With all of this, it is no surprise that she hates the “approved” books about motherhood and being a “godly woman,” because who would like those books? She sees fantasy as a way of escape and reads One Last Stop all night learning about words like queer and bisexual (one reviewer noted that she is implied as bisexual) and sees the world of gay and queer people as joyful, warm, and fun. This contrasts with the controlling attitude of her mother and father which is abusive in more ways than one. While it is a while before she returns to the library or talks about the “secret stolen book” (One Last Stop) as she briefly calls it in Chapter 4, she does come across one more person who changes her life: a girl her age named Riley. She instantly falls for her, with Riley helping break the mindset which is holding her in this terrible situation. The same goes for her talking to Mira (formerly Miriam) who shakes her mindset.
In fact, it isn’t until chapter 7 that the aforementioned book appears again, with Valerie noting she has been “reading, rereading, and re-rereading” the book, while smiling, and begging to ride her bike to the library herself, where she, goes in, as she puts on page 59, and continues on page 60, saying specifically:
“…the farthest corner, in the cubicle with the computer facing the wall and my seat facing the entrance, I get on the internet. With one eye on the entrance in case someone comes in, I start with L and read my way through articles on the GBTQIA and the +. I read articles by the Episcopalians…about homosexuality and the Bible, and how the conservative ideology I’ve been taught is not universally accepted…[later] I’m back at the library. I google every “dangerous liberal doctrine” I can remember being trashed in sermons and lectures…I read about feminism, intersectional feminism, Kimberle Crenshaw, and critical race theory.”
She goes onto note how her parents censor the home internet, review the search history she and her brother go through, and question them about sites they visit. She says she feels “drunk with the sheer power of knowledge” from the library, which she calls the “unregulated wilds.” As the chapter goes on, she comes across the same librarian as before, who wears a sweater, who encourages her to take a queer book, noting it has a “super discreet cover.” As the book goes on, Riley and Valerie “Val” get closer, with Riley helping puncture Val’s impression of the restrictive situation she is in, as she slowly realizes she is in a cult after all.
Sometime later, Val notes, on page 87, she gets lost in books in the library and even smells them, kisses Riley (they both kiss one another various times), and admits she “stole a book from the library” (page 112). The latter surprises Riley, who likely sees her as rebellious. Beyond more chapters showing the insidious of this cult and the forced male-female courting pushed onto boys and girls, she goes to the library over and over, saying she read “every gay book” she could find, whether about critical race theory, her rights, abortion, and more, while appearing submissive to her parents (page 126). She even gets a hidden message, through email, that Riley sent her, hidden within a chemistry paper, sending messages back and forth in the document (pages 140-141), while on the library computer. She continues doing this, while she claims she is studying (page 157), delivers books to Mrs. Miller from her mom.
The library serves as a place Val can be free without parental permission, where she can be herself (see pages 168-170 for instance). She even creates a secret Instagram account where she sees a picture of another girl kissing her cousin, Mira, on the side of the face, and begins a correspondence with her, asking for her help. As noted in the rest of the chapter, she makes clear she is so paranoid that she wants to log into Instagram, delete her messages, even her account, noting wanting the wrong people to find it. However, she doesn’t do that and meets with Mira, telling her what she is going through, allowing them to connect. The library serves as a place of acceptance in contrast to the strict, domineering nature of “home.”
While Riley and Val bond more and their romance deepens, with Riley even coming over for a sleepover at Val’s house, everything goes downhill after David accidentally witnesses (see page 199) Riley and Val kiss and snitches on them, betraying Val, and causing her a world of hurt. He did not have to expose her like that, but it shows that no one in the family can be trusted, how the propaganda can get to anyone, even her brother, who watches pirated anime. It is later revealed, on pages 201 to 202 that her parents found her “queer books” and sketches Riley did of her, even though she had been so careful, believing she was right to be paranoid. Her email password is changed, she is banned from using the computer and the kicker: she is “not allowed to go to the library anymore” and they return her library books, while her secret stolen book (The One Stop) is literally burned on a grill, and set on fire.
Of course, this sends Val into a spiral and depression, with her parents prohibiting her from speaking to Riley. She lashes out at Hannah, understandably, who claims she has to repent and repeats the same cultish viewpoint, even willing to cut ties with Val, showing she has lost to the propaganda. She later gets money from Mrs. Batra, and goes to a bookshelf, where she hides the money in an old encyclopedia (pages 207-209), and she later lashes out at David, who claims he is questioning things, even though he turned her in. She also notes that when she snuck books from the library and googled the conservative canon, she realized how problematic the books she had were, how racist they were (pages 213-214). In a heartbreaking scene, after she turns down the arranged date between her and Andrew Patterson, she says, on page 216:
…Screaming in frustration, I throw myself into my closet and pull the accordion door shut. And there, in the dark, without a single friendly book to comfort me, I cry.
Chapter 28 is when the library gets to chine once more, with Val taking money from Mrs. Batra, and running to the library, going through the woods, and refusing to marry Andrew, no matter what, and is determined to contact Riley. She logs into the computer, but her parents changed her password, then creates another account, and desperately writes a message to Riley, but not Mira, as she doesn’t want her parents to find out (see page 219). She gets back just in time and no one is the wiser. Chapter 29 is the key chapter not because Val works for Mrs. Batra again, but because she goes to the library, or because she is nervous to talk to the librarian who helped her before (she thinks he has “more recommendations for queer books with discreet covers”), and she gets what she was hoping for (see page 225). There’s a message from Val, saying she will pick her up on February 1st, and Val responds she will be ready.
For the next two weeks she plays “by the rules,” takes her Bible study seriously, and everything else, to allay any suspicion. She is able to leave, despite her dad being furious at her, but her mother, unexpectedly is a bit of an ally of sorts, and she gets away. She gets her sort-of happily-ever-after with Riley, as they live together, even if money is tight, away from the cult-like atmosphere. Toward the end of the book, Val notes that she bikes to the local library, reads, and begins to write a bit (see pages 241-242), and her mom helps her get the documents she needs, while in her own way she is supportive.
In the final part of this book includes resources, a reading guide, and an interview with the author. In the second of these is a question noting that Val’s turning point is when she picks up One Last Stop from the library, and another asks what role the library played in Val’s “journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance” (pages 247-248). In the third of these parts of what constitutes the book’s appendix, Naudus notes that during her childhood, books and reading were a “huge escape” with her getting in trouble for reading when she was supposed to be praying, adding that seeing yourself in a story is “like looking into a mirror,” and notes her inspirations, what queer joy means to her, and more (see pages 249 to 253).
I’ve written about theft, acceptance, and library as a place of refuge time and again on this blog, even linking some of the above here. I like how the library is shown as not a neutral place, but instead a place of knowledge. It provides Val with the information she needs to learn more about her surroundings, about her world, away from restrictions imposed on her. This is why Kendra Winchester of Book Riot called, in a review back in June 2024, this book a “love letter to libraries and the freedom they represent for their patrons,” adding that “without the books she reads at the library, she might never have been able to imagine a different future for herself.”
The role of the library in spreading knowledge, even that which challenges orthodoxies, is why some have began book bans and even some have burned books they have hated, not wanting anyone else to have that knowledge. They find that knowledge is dangerous because it challenges their worldview. This is why it is so important to protect libraries, whether academic, special, public, or otherwise, from attack by governments, individuals, and groups.
© 2025-2026 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.
#abusiveRelationships #arson #AsianAmerican #bookBurning #books #Bookshop #censorship #Christianity #cults #family #GayThePrayAway #informationProvider #lateBooks #lesbians #LGBTQ #librariesAreContested #librariesAreNotNeutral #libraryAsRefuge #libraryProperty #maleLibrarians #misogyny #OneLastStop #propaganda #quiet #reading #religion #restrictions #socialMedia #TaiwanesePatrons #theft #WhiteMen #WiFi -
“A haven” and place of knowledge: The key role of libraries and librarians in “Gay the Pray Away”
“Valerie Danners is in a cult. She just doesn’t know it yet. But when she stumbles upon a queer romance novel at the library, everything about her life—centered around a fundamentalist Christian homeschooling group —is thrown into question.”- Book’s official description on Penguin Random House, to give an example of what got me into this book.
Last year, I noted that I purchased a book during a sale of Pride-themed books on Bookshop and came across a book by Natalie Naudus entitled Gay the Pray Away. One of the key protagonists of this novel, Valerie Danners comes across a queer romance novel at the local library and begins, plus her coming across a new girl in town named Riley, that turns her world upside down. In my post the, I noted that libraries and knowledge are key to the book, with librarians supportive of her learning more about queer people, likely even letting her take the aforementioned queer romance book with her, and pointing out, how at one point, her restrictive parents do not allow her to go to the library. Their reasoning is simple: they know that the information there goes against the teachings of the Christian fundamentalist cult she is a part of. In this post I’ll expand on that and talk about more of the themes in this queer young adult romance novel and connect it to my previous posts.
Libraries and knowledge are key to this book even from the first chapter. Valerie, who is half-Asian/multiracial/biracial is performing and acting like she is a reactionary bible-thumper like her parents, who have been pulled into a misogynistic cult (she doesn’t realize the extent of this at the time) led by a White man. She goes to the library, despite her “friend” Hannah telling her that she can use the approved Bible encyclopedia (which only allows people to see certain information) but she resists the words of her “friend.” She later convinces her parents, with her mom from Taiwan and her dad a White man from the U.S., to bring her to the library, which she calls a quiet “haven” (see page 16) so she can do “some research” for her school paper, claiming she wants to read a Sean Hannity book (a lie). She acts like she is going there to do research but she actually wants to go to the young adult section, so she can lose herself in fantasy. She explains how she was once at a protest against a book deemed “sinful” with her mother, and how she lives to read, with what she says on page 17 making clear what’s she going through:
Every change I get, I’m tucked in my closet, devouring anything [to read] I can get my hands on. My life and world feel so small and strict and cold. I see the same people all the time who believe the same things, dress the same, talk the same, look the same. But books? Books are my escape.
She soon comes across a book by queer non-binary romance novelist Casey McQuiston, named One Last Stop, flips/zooms through it when her mom isn’t looking, calling it a “forbidden” book (since it is gay), but says it looks “pretty and joyful,” and steals the book, tucking it into her skirt. A librarian, a White man with glasses, accidentally crashes his book cart into a shelf, and while she thinks she will get caught as the alarm goes off, the librarian says it isn’t an issue, adding that their system is buggy and tells her to have a nice day. She places the book she had into the bottom of her backpack while in the bathroom, and lies to her mom about what happened. Going forward, it is an open question as to whether the librarian knew she had the book or not, which is something open to interpretation.
Going into the second chapter, she hides the book so she can hide this “contraband,” while putting on a good face, and kept in this sort of prison, even thinking that her brother David is a sort of ally (I’ll get to that later too). It is interesting that she sees her closet as a place where she is safe (likely inferring to the closet that queer people find themselves in before coming out) and it is where she rips off the cover of the book, throws it in the toilet, and adds a post-it note to it, if it is found. This paranoia is part of her daily life, where she is being watched and controlled, with her parents limiting information (there’s no Wi-Fi and the her brother’s bedroom was removed), she hides this book behind others, so it can’t be found, and her brother watches pirated anime, as she knows full well.
With all of this, it is no surprise that she hates the “approved” books about motherhood and being a “godly woman,” because who would like those books? She sees fantasy as a way of escape and reads One Last Stop all night learning about words like queer and bisexual (one reviewer noted that she is implied as bisexual) and sees the world of gay and queer people as joyful, warm, and fun. This contrasts with the controlling attitude of her mother and father which is abusive in more ways than one. While it is a while before she returns to the library or talks about the “secret stolen book” (One Last Stop) as she briefly calls it in Chapter 4, she does come across one more person who changes her life: a girl her age named Riley. She instantly falls for her, with Riley helping break the mindset which is holding her in this terrible situation. The same goes for her talking to Mira (formerly Miriam) who shakes her mindset.
In fact, it isn’t until chapter 7 that the aforementioned book appears again, with Valerie noting she has been “reading, rereading, and re-rereading” the book, while smiling, and begging to ride her bike to the library herself, where she, goes in, as she puts on page 59, and continues on page 60, saying specifically:
“…the farthest corner, in the cubicle with the computer facing the wall and my seat facing the entrance, I get on the internet. With one eye on the entrance in case someone comes in, I start with L and read my way through articles on the GBTQIA and the +. I read articles by the Episcopalians…about homosexuality and the Bible, and how the conservative ideology I’ve been taught is not universally accepted…[later] I’m back at the library. I google every “dangerous liberal doctrine” I can remember being trashed in sermons and lectures…I read about feminism, intersectional feminism, Kimberle Crenshaw, and critical race theory.”
She goes onto note how her parents censor the home internet, review the search history she and her brother go through, and question them about sites they visit. She says she feels “drunk with the sheer power of knowledge” from the library, which she calls the “unregulated wilds.” As the chapter goes on, she comes across the same librarian as before, who wears a sweater, who encourages her to take a queer book, noting it has a “super discreet cover.” As the book goes on, Riley and Valerie “Val” get closer, with Riley helping puncture Val’s impression of the restrictive situation she is in, as she slowly realizes she is in a cult after all.
Sometime later, Val notes, on page 87, she gets lost in books in the library and even smells them, kisses Riley (they both kiss one another various times), and admits she “stole a book from the library” (page 112). The latter surprises Riley, who likely sees her as rebellious. Beyond more chapters showing the insidious of this cult and the forced male-female courting pushed onto boys and girls, she goes to the library over and over, saying she read “every gay book” she could find, whether about critical race theory, her rights, abortion, and more, while appearing submissive to her parents (page 126). She even gets a hidden message, through email, that Riley sent her, hidden within a chemistry paper, sending messages back and forth in the document (pages 140-141), while on the library computer. She continues doing this, while she claims she is studying (page 157), delivers books to Mrs. Miller from her mom.
The library serves as a place Val can be free without parental permission, where she can be herself (see pages 168-170 for instance). She even creates a secret Instagram account where she sees a picture of another girl kissing her cousin, Mira, on the side of the face, and begins a correspondence with her, asking for her help. As noted in the rest of the chapter, she makes clear she is so paranoid that she wants to log into Instagram, delete her messages, even her account, noting wanting the wrong people to find it. However, she doesn’t do that and meets with Mira, telling her what she is going through, allowing them to connect. The library serves as a place of acceptance in contrast to the strict, domineering nature of “home.”
While Riley and Val bond more and their romance deepens, with Riley even coming over for a sleepover at Val’s house, everything goes downhill after David accidentally witnesses (see page 199) Riley and Val kiss and snitches on them, betraying Val, and causing her a world of hurt. He did not have to expose her like that, but it shows that no one in the family can be trusted, how the propaganda can get to anyone, even her brother, who watches pirated anime. It is later revealed, on pages 201 to 202 that her parents found her “queer books” and sketches Riley did of her, even though she had been so careful, believing she was right to be paranoid. Her email password is changed, she is banned from using the computer and the kicker: she is “not allowed to go to the library anymore” and they return her library books, while her secret stolen book (The One Stop) is literally burned on a grill, and set on fire.
Of course, this sends Val into a spiral and depression, with her parents prohibiting her from speaking to Riley. She lashes out at Hannah, understandably, who claims she has to repent and repeats the same cultish viewpoint, even willing to cut ties with Val, showing she has lost to the propaganda. She later gets money from Mrs. Batra, and goes to a bookshelf, where she hides the money in an old encyclopedia (pages 207-209), and she later lashes out at David, who claims he is questioning things, even though he turned her in. She also notes that when she snuck books from the library and googled the conservative canon, she realized how problematic the books she had were, how racist they were (pages 213-214). In a heartbreaking scene, after she turns down the arranged date between her and Andrew Patterson, she says, on page 216:
…Screaming in frustration, I throw myself into my closet and pull the accordion door shut. And there, in the dark, without a single friendly book to comfort me, I cry.
Chapter 28 is when the library gets to chine once more, with Val taking money from Mrs. Batra, and running to the library, going through the woods, and refusing to marry Andrew, no matter what, and is determined to contact Riley. She logs into the computer, but her parents changed her password, then creates another account, and desperately writes a message to Riley, but not Mira, as she doesn’t want her parents to find out (see page 219). She gets back just in time and no one is the wiser. Chapter 29 is the key chapter not because Val works for Mrs. Batra again, but because she goes to the library, or because she is nervous to talk to the librarian who helped her before (she thinks he has “more recommendations for queer books with discreet covers”), and she gets what she was hoping for (see page 225). There’s a message from Val, saying she will pick her up on February 1st, and Val responds she will be ready.
For the next two weeks she plays “by the rules,” takes her Bible study seriously, and everything else, to allay any suspicion. She is able to leave, despite her dad being furious at her, but her mother, unexpectedly is a bit of an ally of sorts, and she gets away. She gets her sort-of happily-ever-after with Riley, as they live together, even if money is tight, away from the cult-like atmosphere. Toward the end of the book, Val notes that she bikes to the local library, reads, and begins to write a bit (see pages 241-242), and her mom helps her get the documents she needs, while in her own way she is supportive.
In the final part of this book includes resources, a reading guide, and an interview with the author. In the second of these is a question noting that Val’s turning point is when she picks up One Last Stop from the library, and another asks what role the library played in Val’s “journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance” (pages 247-248). In the third of these parts of what constitutes the book’s appendix, Naudus notes that during her childhood, books and reading were a “huge escape” with her getting in trouble for reading when she was supposed to be praying, adding that seeing yourself in a story is “like looking into a mirror,” and notes her inspirations, what queer joy means to her, and more (see pages 249 to 253).
I’ve written about theft, acceptance, and library as a place of refuge time and again on this blog, even linking some of the above here. I like how the library is shown as not a neutral place, but instead a place of knowledge. It provides Val with the information she needs to learn more about her surroundings, about her world, away from restrictions imposed on her. This is why Kendra Winchester of Book Riot called, in a review back in June 2024, this book a “love letter to libraries and the freedom they represent for their patrons,” adding that “without the books she reads at the library, she might never have been able to imagine a different future for herself.”
The role of the library in spreading knowledge, even that which challenges orthodoxies, is why some have began book bans and even some have burned books they have hated, not wanting anyone else to have that knowledge. They find that knowledge is dangerous because it challenges their worldview. This is why it is so important to protect libraries, whether academic, special, public, or otherwise, from attack by governments, individuals, and groups.
© 2025-2026 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.
#abusiveRelationships #arson #AsianAmerican #bookBurning #books #Bookshop #censorship #Christianity #cults #family #GayThePrayAway #informationProvider #lateBooks #lesbians #LGBTQ #librariesAreContested #librariesAreNotNeutral #libraryAsRefuge #libraryProperty #maleLibrarians #misogyny #OneLastStop #propaganda #quiet #reading #religion #restrictions #socialMedia #TaiwanesePatrons #theft #WhiteMen #WiFi -
Yes, #cult messaging & dependency on a Supreme leader who endeavors to 'program' thought patterns by 'association' and repetition. ✓
Ask Goebbels. 1984Lots of research on #cults and also on 'deprogramming', which is quite resistant, given the strong foundation and 'wiring', along with 'peer pressure' and #CognitiveDissonance.
And then there is the "Stockholm Syndrome".
All good until the conclusion, not so simple as "stupid people... easy to program". https://bit.ly/Sostupid
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Yes, #cult messaging & dependency on a Supreme leader who endeavors to 'program' thought patterns by 'association' and repetition. ✓
Ask Goebbels. 1984Lots of research on #cults and also on 'deprogramming', which is quite resistant, given the strong foundation and 'wiring', along with 'peer pressure' and #CognitiveDissonance.
And then there is the "Stockholm Syndrome".
All good until the conclusion, not so simple as "stupid people... easy to program". https://bit.ly/Sostupid
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Growing Pains: Woman cries about how hard it is to be #ExMAGA. The internet doesn’t take it well.
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#Christian Content Is Just #Sadistic Now
#TaylorAlesia aka "The #Bible Chick" is warning ya'll not to anger her very loving #god
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#Christian Content Is Just #Sadistic Now
#TaylorAlesia aka "The #Bible Chick" is warning ya'll not to anger her very loving #god
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Top #10Tips For Being a #Conservative #Christian
Mrs. #BettyBowers, #America's Best Christian
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0A4SJoYv5s
#americans #praying #christianity #republican #MAGA #refugees #judgment #god #jesus #atheist #politics #religion #cults
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https://medium.com/storyangles/emotional-contagion-in-group-psychology-14deb6ee037c
Emotional Contagion in Group Psychology
Fear, Excitement, and Rage Spread Fast in CrowdsEmotions ripple through groups and shape revolutions, cults, and viral movements.
#psychology #EmotionalContagion #groups #viral #mobs #cults #revolution #emotions
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https://medium.com/storyangles/emotional-contagion-in-group-psychology-14deb6ee037c
Emotional Contagion in Group Psychology
Fear, Excitement, and Rage Spread Fast in CrowdsEmotions ripple through groups and shape revolutions, cults, and viral movements.
#psychology #EmotionalContagion #groups #viral #mobs #cults #revolution #emotions
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https://medium.com/storyangles/emotional-contagion-in-group-psychology-14deb6ee037c
Emotional Contagion in Group Psychology
Fear, Excitement, and Rage Spread Fast in CrowdsEmotions ripple through groups and shape revolutions, cults, and viral movements.
#psychology #EmotionalContagion #groups #viral #mobs #cults #revolution #emotions
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https://medium.com/storyangles/emotional-contagion-in-group-psychology-14deb6ee037c
Emotional Contagion in Group Psychology
Fear, Excitement, and Rage Spread Fast in CrowdsEmotions ripple through groups and shape revolutions, cults, and viral movements.
#psychology #EmotionalContagion #groups #viral #mobs #cults #revolution #emotions
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IA animated
Working on my Next Kickstarter project
Follow for more.
#ia #ianimate #animation#stl #art #design #zbrush #figure #armor #digitalart #3dart #3dmodel #3dartitst #women #3dprint #kickstarter #cults #cults3d #girl #sculpture #characterdesign #character #maya #3dprinting #mugiwara #sculpt #miniature #elegoosaturn #3dprints #resinprint
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IA animated
Working on my Next Kickstarter project
Follow for more.
#ia #ianimate #animation#stl #art #design #zbrush #figure #armor #digitalart #3dart #3dmodel #3dartitst #women #3dprint #kickstarter #cults #cults3d #girl #sculpture #characterdesign #character #maya #3dprinting #mugiwara #sculpt #miniature #elegoosaturn #3dprints #resinprint
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Working on my Next Kickstarter project
Follow for more.
#katana #3d #3dsculpt #stl #art #design #zbrush #figure #armor #digitalart #3dart #3dmodel #3dartitst #women #3dprint #kickstarter #cults #cults3d #girl #sculpture #characterdesign #character #maya #3dprinting #mugiwara #sculpt #miniature #elegoosaturn #3dprints #resinprint
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Working on my Next Kickstarter project
Follow for more
#katana #3d #3dsculpt #stl #art #design #zbrush #figure #armor #digitalart #3dart #3dmodel #3dartitst #women #3dprint #kickstarter #cults #cults3d #girl #sculpture #characterdesign #character #maya #3dprinting #mugiwara #sculpt #miniature #elegoosaturn #3dprints #resinprint
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Working on my Next Kickstsrter project
#katana #3d #3dsculpt #stl #art #design #zbrush #figure #armor #digitalart #3dart #3dmodel #3dartitst #women #3dprint #kickstarter #cults #cults3d #girl #sculpture #characterdesign #character #maya #3dprinting #mugiwara #sculpt #miniature #elegoosaturn #3dprints #resinprint
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Illuminati: The Movie Art and Watch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R71dM3VwmgEI was sent this and asked what my opinion is on it. Just a little casual watch, so I decided if I’m going to suffer through this, I’m going to do it while drawing and sharing it with the internet.
#illuminati #theulluminati #freemasons #conspiracy #movies #drawing #art #creative #craftyandy #antisemitism #conspiracytheories #craftyarts #Christianity #religion #cults #occult #worship #aliens #devil #satan #christainnightmares -
Illuminati The Movie Art and Watch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49FHOupaO80I was sent this and asked what my opinion is on it. Just little casual watch, so I decided if I’m going to suffer through this, I’m going to do it while drawing and sharing it with the internet.
#illuminati #theulluminati #freemasons #conspiracy #movies #drawing #art #creative #craftyandy #antisemitism #conspiracytheories #craftyarts #Christianity #religion #cults #occult #worship #aliens #devil #satan #christainnightmares -
Work in progress
FOLLOW FOR MORE
#3d #3dsculpt #stl #art #design #zbrush #figure #armor #digitalart #3dart #3dmodel #3dartitst #women #blender #3dprint #kickstarter #cults #cults3d #girl #sculpture #characterdesign #character #maya #3dprinting #mugiwara #sculpt #miniature #elegoo #elegoosaturn #3dprints #resinprint #resinprinting
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Work in progress
FOLLOW FOR MORE
#3d #3dsculpt #stl #art #design #zbrush #figure #armor #digitalart #3dart #3dmodel #3dartitst #women #blender #3dprint #kickstarter #cults #cults3d #girl #sculpture #characterdesign #character #maya
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Work in progress
FOLLOW FOR MORE
#3d #3dsculpt #stl #art #design #zbrush #figure #armor #digitalart #3dart #3dmodel #3dartitst #women #blender #3dprint #kickstarter #cults #cults3d #girl #sculpture #characterdesign #character #maya
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This Twin Flames Universe is so fucked up that I can’t believe anyone would fall for it. But then we are all looking for love and community and scammers and frauds and cults abuse that. I’m trying to come up with ways to combat that online, maybe some form of meme war? I’ll let it percolate a bit more, I’m sure I’ll come up with something. #TwinFlames #TwinFlameUniverse #EscapingTwinFlames #MemeWar #deprogramming #cults #transandnonbinaryrightsarehumanrights #tfu
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The thing that I associate with magic the most is not religion or even spirituality. It’s wonder, amazement, and excitement. To me, it is the joy of creation and expression. When speaking with occultists, there is no wonder in their work. Their work is dogmatic, ritualistic, and cultish. I prefer the creative and exploratory dimensions of magic over the rigid structures found in occultism.
So, am I an occultist? Not really. I am a magician. I will use occult lexicon, models, and paradigms when talking about magic online or speaking with occultists; however, for me, occultism does not inspire wonder, amazement, and excitement. I view magic as an art and technology that transcends and is more abstract than occultism. I am enraptured by the atavistic and uncivilized resonance, the sublime romantic undertones, and the transcendental essence of magic. I am fascinated by its ancient, primal, and untamed qualities. I find beauty in its mysterious and awe-inspiring nature. It’s passion and desire made manifest. As a hedonist, my magic blends desire with will; the objects of my enchantment must kindle my desires. Fantasy, entwined with desire, becomes the catalyst for my inspiration.
After a series of disturbing conversations with a particular individual, I am reminded of how too many occultists are obsessed. Obsessions are not passions. Obsessions are like addictions, without the physical dependence or the desensitization. An obsession is something we compulsively do to avoid feeling bad. It is a distraction from neuroticism and intrusive thoughts. Since it displaces those intrusive thoughts and brings relief, many people see it as a way to cope.
A way to think about it is there is a difference between having an orgasm and urinating. If you were to hold in your urine for a long time and then use the bathroom, you would experience relief. However, it is entirely different from an orgasm. It’s similar to that. They are not feeling pleasure; rather, they feel relief from distracting themselves from the intrusive thoughts.
This particular occultist I am thinking of conflated obsessions with passions and relief from intrusive thoughts as passion or joy. I do not think many occultists actually even like magic or occultism. I rarely see them express anything positive; instead, it seems as if they use the esoteric aspects of occultism to mark an in and an out group. They then antagonize or have contempt for those in the out group who are not aligned with their particular esoteric group, culture, or niche. Instead of enjoying magic, they use it as a coping mechanism to deal with neuroticism. I think they are obsessed with it because it allows them to cope with things like trauma, depression, etc. It’s a drug to them that doesn’t result in physical dependence. There is no genuine joy or pleasure. Obsessions are not passions.
#anarchism #anarchist #anarchists #anarchy #Animism #animistic #ceremonialMagic #ceremonialMagick #chaosMagic #chaosMagick #conspiracyTheories #conspiracyTheory #cults #DKMU #magick #mentalIllness #obsession #occult #occultism #pagan #paganism #paranormal #Twitter #witch #witchcraft
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Well, I had a very disturbing conversation with a member of DKMU last night. It was disturbing because it drove home the damage of Internet communities and cults, especially occult cults.
Personally, my schema is very robust, ambiguous, vague, and open-ended. I don’t view entities that my schema represents as being literal representations of anything; rather, I approach them from the perspective of them being mnemonic abstractions that allow me to apprehend, reason, model, and intuit things that I experience. I am skeptical of reality, and I don’t think that humans can ever truly know reality. The limits of the accuracy of my internal schema do not cause me to fry my circuits.
Ontologically and epistemologically, a discontinuity in a system, i.e., a hole in the graph for that system, are singularities. Singularities are literal ontological and epistemological holes in your knowledge. Either, the ontological thing that denotes the knowledge is missing or the epistemological aspects are missing. An ontological expression is essentially saying there is an instance of this thing. The epistemological dimensions of the instance of that thing are how do we know that knowledge about that thing is justified. A hole can emerge when we lack knowledge about that thing or we lack a category in our schema for that thing. The lack of a category is a lack of semantics. We can think of the semantic knowledge of our schemas as graphs. The singularities would emerge where the graph is not connected to itself or where it references something that blows up to infinity from an epistemological perspective.
Well, last night, after the conversation with this particularly disturbing individual, it hit me why the members of DKMU constantly like to say I am not real, though at this point they have more than enough information to verify my existence. It is because I don’t fit their schema.
When we think of languages, we think of something like the language this is written in, English. Ontologically, a language consists of symbols joined together by operators to form relationships and rules. The definition of a language converges on the definition of a problem. In addition to that, symbols are abstractions for categories. When I say I am typing on a computer, I am saying that a computer has qualities and properties such that it belongs to the category of a computer. The definitions of terms belong to a category and the category itself is a symbol. So, our representations of objects and how we categorize them in our internal schemas are also symbols.
Psychologically, our schema informs our paradigms and implicitly creates a set of expectations. From what I can tell, dimensions of my existence do not fit their schemas or their paradigms. There are singularities in their psychological models of the world, and instead of changing their schema, they try to reconcile the cognitive dissonance by saying I am wrong; however, by existing, I am showing their cognitive models are wrong, so they reconcile that by trying to disprove my existence. It’s very fascinating and quite disturbing.
From what I can tell, their entire internal schemas, and thus the language they use to model the world, seem to emerge completely from memetic transmissions. A memetic entity is something that is culturally spread by people observing, imitating, or replicating it. The semantics of their schema seem to be laid down by memetic transmissions and literal Internet memes, so they look at the world completely through a model dictated by Internet cultures. It is very disturbing.
How people mark times tells you a lot about them. Religious rituals and holidays also mark the passage of time. This particular individual seemed to mark time via Internet epochs and presidential elections, i.e., who the president was. This implies that what is going on in the Internet and politics dominates how they mark events in their life.
Models are constructed from languages since the metastructure of the model is dependent on the relationships symbols, categories, and entities have with each other; therefore. There’s a bit of solipsism in their internal models where they view things as implicitly prescriptive and not descriptive – descriptive models need to be calibrated; therefore, if something does not fit the language of their model, they reject that instance of the anomaly. They are unable to update their internal models. Besides that, this particular person also further defined things in their schema through the writings of C.S. Lewis. In an incredibly bizarre way, things they did not understand only made some sense when they applied a framework from this author on top of it. The semantics of their entire internal schema seem to be dictated by fiction (including religious fictions like the Bible), political propaganda, and memetic transmissions, i.e., Internet memes. This isn’t recent, either. This seems to have been in the works since they were teenagers and it is coming to a head now.
I think a large amount of their unhinged behavior comes from the inability to integrate and synthesize new information and update their internal models. From feedback from this particular individual, their issue with me seems to be that they find the cognitive dissonance created by my behavior, my existence, and their expectations. They are trying to resolve that cognitive dissonance without updating or revising their internal models, which is where these unhinged parasocial narratives and doxxing attempts are coming from. The parasocial narratives are explanations that would make them feel better. The issue; however, is the model, their perceptions, and their expectations they are looking through. They are trapped in a hall of fun house mirrors. It is both fascinating and horrifying. Anomalies are weird. I find it very ironic that a member of a cabal of chaos magicians says that me being an anomaly to them makes them feel uncomfortable. Aren’t they supposed to be all about weirdness?
#anarchism #anarchist #anarchists #anarchy #Animism #animistic #chaosMagic #chaosMagick #conspiracyTheories #conspiracyTheory #cults #DKMU #magick #occult #occultism #pagan #paganism #paranormal #Twitter #witch #witchcraft
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A reason I no longer use Discord is that every time I join a server, the gatekeeping, application, and vetting processes make me feel like I am joining a cult. Because I am waiting for my phone to charge, I decided to join an occult Discord server from my laptop while I wait. They seriously had a convoluted system of gatekeeping bots, only for you to have to fill out a 15-question application form where they wanted a paragraph for each question, which was basically an exam on occultism. It’s too much of a bother for me, and I don’t really use Discord. However, it is insane to me that to join Discord servers, especially the occult ones, you basically have to apply for membership to a cult. Absolutely insane!
The only people who would actually care to set up such a system or go through such a system are extremely online people. The cultures of Discord are setting up automated systems to select for the most toxic, extremely online people on Discord. Gatekeeping on Discord and other esoteric communities is a type of filter. They’re automated to create filters. Here’s the interesting thing about toxic, hateful, and dangerous communities: what makes them hateful is directly related to the people willing to go through those systems and pass through those filters because you only get the most committed.
There has been research done on this, and it is part of the reason why deplatforming does not work for the most hateful communities. The most committed to those communities will go through the filters and obstacles required to reconstitute themselves, where you have a selection for the worst of the worst. It’s counter-intuitive, but a system of automated solutions to gatekeep and vet to protect a community paradoxically selects for the most extreme and hateful people. You make communities worse by gatekeeping and not better because you create dynamic bifurcation where the most extreme, militant, and committed get selected for by passing through those filters.
It is basically a metaheuristic process similar to natural selection. In natural selection, environmental factors favor certain traits that increase an organism’s chances of survival and reproduction. Similarly, in the context of online communities and gatekeeping, the selective pressure comes from the criteria set by moderators or the community itself, favoring individuals who meet certain standards or criteria. In online communities with stringent gatekeeping measures, the process favors individuals with extreme viewpoints or behaviors, leading to the amplification of those extremes within the community. It’s the perfect way of engineering a memetic plague. Memetic is frequently thrown about as a buzzword in post-modern psychological model paradigms, equivalent to the words energy or frequency in energy model paradigms.
By memetic, I am referring to a cultural phenomenon that is taught, learned, and imitated. Since this selects for the most harmful individuals, it creates the most harmful cultures where virulent cultural elements can be observed by others they interact with outside those communities and imitated. Since memetic entities operate similarly to viruses, we can describe them as a type of cultural or cognitive germ. In that sense, Discord is a memetic sewer. I have psychopathy, so my mirror neurons are shot. Mirror neurons are involved in how we decode memetic entities, so while I am capable of superficial mimicry to be successful in society, I don’t internalize memetic pathogens. So, beyond annoyance, I am not infected.
Honestly, I think this is what led to the destruction of online occult communities. While the early Internet was less accessible and it served as a filter for the tech-savvy, other than that, it was relatively open and unsorted. For example, before Discord, I spent a lot of time on IRC. Early recommendation algorithms and machine learning models were essentially categorization processes. They analyzed user data, interactions, and content attributes to categorize or classify content into different groups or categories. These categories were then used to personalize users’ feeds, recommend content, and target advertisements. As these became introduced, it started creating these more and more selective filters that, via something similar to natural selection, amplified the worst of the worst, which started to infect and corrupt occult resources online. I think that occult communities were able to boom in the late 90s and early 2000s, until the start of the 2010s, because it was relatively open and there weren’t any selection pressures to engineer memetic plagues we are dealing with.
#anarchism #anarchist #anarchists #anarchy #Animism #animistic #chaosMagic #chaosMagick #conspiracyTheories #conspiracyTheory #cults #Discord #magick #memetic #memetics #occult #occultism #occultists #occulture #pagan #paganism #rants #Reddit #socialMedia #Twitter
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This is going to be a very, very horrible and lethal timeline/reality to just be a mundane human without any occult or esoteric knowledge or psychic and magical abilities in. Considering the rate of survival for “normal” people, I do not envy them. My husband and I are very sensitive to magical and psychic energy. For my husband, it boosts his divinatory and precognitive abilities. He will suddenly start having visions and will develop an interest in refining his astrological skills. For me, it makes me very hungry as a vampire and dark. If you are a regular human, you are pretty much screwed. If there is a nuclear war, and you are a regular human, you will probably die.
I think that’s how magical skills and psychic abilities will probably spread. I think it will spread through natural selection following a nuclear war. That’s why I think magical organizations trying to make the world more magical through their magical operations being horrified that we are teetering on the collapse of civilization shows how asinine and short-sighted their goals were. Evolution works through survivorship.
It’s conventionally asserted and believed that magic shifts probabilities. Shifting probabilities, even on small scales, changes the stochastic aspects of radiation. The number and energy of radiation particles detected at a given location and time fluctuate randomly due to various environmental factors. In addition to that, when radiation interacts with matter, such as in scattering or absorption processes, the outcomes are probabilistic. That means that a magician who has a latent ability to shift probabilities and the implicit desire to live will shift probabilities so that high-energy radioactive particles are unlikely to hit and shred their genetic and cellular physiology. A really neat way to visualize this is to create a DIY cloud chamber and record it and have it in the vicinity whenever you do any magical operation. If your magic has a bit of power, it will interfere with the background radiation via changing the ionization energy of what you see in the cloud chamber. You will be able to see it.
Want to prove Einstein’s Special Relativity? Build this.
I try to keep the woo down and avoid using buzzwords as buzzwords. A field is a structured set. In mathematics, a set is a collection of distinct objects, considered as an entity. A field is a structured set. A structured set refers to a set equipped with additional elements or operations that give it a specific organization or arrangement. So, we can say that a psychic field is an organized collection of entities that possess subjective characteristics, i.e., qualia. The properties in the topology of that field would have values.
If we say that each property or cell of that field is at equilibrium, then a wave is when one cell is not at equilibrium and propagates a change. It spreads a change to the other adjacent cells that push them out of equilibrium. If you have a grid and all the values are 0, a wave would be a change in values from the first row and first column from left to right. It would wrap around each row and changes the values from 0 to a different value, too. That is a wave. The ability for one psychic entity to propagate a wave of change to another is the potential energy, i.e., dunamis, and the actual changing of those other things is energia. There are analogs to potential and kinetic energy on a psychic level.
While it may seem like I am some flavor of animist, I am on the fence about that. I frequently say that will is analogous to mass in that mass is a property that resists acceleration. Will is a phenomenological property that when you try to get someone to do something, their will intervenes and resists you. Consent is a property where a person’s will does not act to stop you. When someone explicitly violates a person’s consent, they are acting against the will of that person. Psychic phenomena imply a more fundamental, higher-dimensional phenomenological domain. From that perspective, a table has a psychic aspect to it where it can experience and observe itself. But, when I act on that table, the table cannot resist me. It has no will. Conscious entities have a will. An entity that is a body of experiences is not necessarily conscious and doesn’t necessarily have a will. It’s still energy to be ordered, where it begins to have a will when it interacts with my will. It would be analogous to massless energy — light. So, manipulating psychic energy that comes from the existence of tables and rocks would be like manipulating light. It has psychic energy that emerges from a subjective characteristic of experience where the rock reflexively perceives itself, yet it has no will. Mythologies, stories, and fictions are ways that we can organize this energy, where the seed of its emergence as a conscious entity comes from collective will.
Earth has an atmosphere of gas around our planet. Psychic fields are coherent and cohesive in the same way gas or liquid is. Similar to how there is a flow to liquids and air currents, there is a flow to our consciousness. In the same way this gas can heat up in such a way that it drives air currents and streams and creates storms and all sorts of other meteorological phenomena, energy added to the psychic atmosphere of our planet can do similar things. Because my husband and I are highly sensitive to this, we experience an increase in our abilities and an alignment of our personality traits in certain ways. There’s a huge psychic storm building up. I wonder if it is cyclical. Something similar happened a few years ago, so I wonder if the cyclical spiral society finds itself in beneath the heavens is being mirrored above in the heavens.
#anarchism #anarchist #anarchists #anarchy #Animism #animistic #Astral #astrological #astrology #chaosMagic #chaosMagick #conspiracyTheories #conspiracyTheory #cults #divination #dystopia #dystopian #egregore #egregores #energyWork #godforms #Metaphysics #nuclearWar #occult #occultism #pagan #paganism #paranormal #psychic #Psychokinesis #servitor #servitors #vampire #vampires #witch #witchcraft #WorldWar #WorldWar3 #WorldWarIII #WW3 #WWIII
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This is going to be a very, very horrible and lethal timeline/reality to just be a mundane human without any occult or esoteric knowledge or psychic and magical abilities in. Considering the rate of survival for “normal” people, I do not envy them. My husband and I are very sensitive to magical and psychic energy. For my husband, it boosts his divinatory and precognitive abilities. He will suddenly start having visions and will develop an interest in refining his astrological skills. For me, it makes me very hungry as a vampire and dark. If you are a regular human, you are pretty much screwed. If there is a nuclear war, and you are a regular human, you will probably die.
I think that’s how magical skills and psychic abilities will probably spread. I think it will spread through natural selection following a nuclear war. That’s why I think magical organizations trying to make the world more magical through their magical operations being horrified that we are teetering on the collapse of civilization shows how asinine and short-sighted their goals were. Evolution works through survivorship.
It’s conventionally asserted and believed that magic shifts probabilities. Shifting probabilities, even on small scales, changes the stochastic aspects of radiation. The number and energy of radiation particles detected at a given location and time fluctuate randomly due to various environmental factors. In addition to that, when radiation interacts with matter, such as in scattering or absorption processes, the outcomes are probabilistic. That means that a magician who has a latent ability to shift probabilities and the implicit desire to live will shift probabilities so that high-energy radioactive particles are unlikely to hit and shred their genetic and cellular physiology. A really neat way to visualize this is to create a DIY cloud chamber and record it and have it in the vicinity whenever you do any magical operation. If your magic has a bit of power, it will interfere with the background radiation via changing the ionization energy of what you see in the cloud chamber. You will be able to see it.
Want to prove Einstein’s Special Relativity? Build this.
I try to keep the woo down and avoid using buzzwords as buzzwords. A field is a structured set. In mathematics, a set is a collection of distinct objects, considered as an entity. A field is a structured set. A structured set refers to a set equipped with additional elements or operations that give it a specific organization or arrangement. So, we can say that a psychic field is an organized collection of entities that possess subjective characteristics, i.e., qualia. The properties in the topology of that field would have values.
If we say that each property or cell of that field is at equilibrium, then a wave is when one cell is not at equilibrium and propagates a change. It spreads a change to the other adjacent cells that push them out of equilibrium. If you have a grid and all the values are 0, a wave would be a change in values from the first row and first column from left to right. It would wrap around each row and changes the values from 0 to a different value, too. That is a wave. The ability for one psychic entity to propagate a wave of change to another is the potential energy, i.e., dunamis, and the actual changing of those other things is energia. There are analogs to potential and kinetic energy on a psychic level.
While it may seem like I am some flavor of animist, I am on the fence about that. I frequently say that will is analogous to mass in that mass is a property that resists acceleration. Will is a phenomenological property that when you try to get someone to do something, their will intervenes and resists you. Consent is a property where a person’s will does not act to stop you. When someone explicitly violates a person’s consent, they are acting against the will of that person. Psychic phenomena imply a more fundamental, higher-dimensional phenomenological domain. From that perspective, a table has a psychic aspect to it where it can experience and observe itself. But, when I act on that table, the table cannot resist me. It has no will. Conscious entities have a will. An entity that is a body of experiences is not necessarily conscious and doesn’t necessarily have a will. It’s still energy to be ordered, where it begins to have a will when it interacts with my will. It would be analogous to massless energy — light. So, manipulating psychic energy that comes from the existence of tables and rocks would be like manipulating light. It has psychic energy that emerges from a subjective characteristic of experience where the rock reflexively perceives itself, yet it has no will. Mythologies, stories, and fictions are ways that we can organize this energy, where the seed of its emergence as a conscious entity comes from collective will.
Earth has an atmosphere of gas around our planet. Psychic fields are coherent and cohesive in the same way gas or liquid is. Similar to how there is a flow to liquids and air currents, there is a flow to our consciousness. In the same way this gas can heat up in such a way that it drives air currents and streams and creates storms and all sorts of other meteorological phenomena, energy added to the psychic atmosphere of our planet can do similar things. Because my husband and I are highly sensitive to this, we experience an increase in our abilities and an alignment of our personality traits in certain ways. There’s a huge psychic storm building up. I wonder if it is cyclical. Something similar happened a few years ago, so I wonder if the cyclical spiral society finds itself in beneath the heavens is being mirrored above in the heavens.
#anarchism #anarchist #anarchists #anarchy #Animism #animistic #Astral #astrological #astrology #chaosMagic #chaosMagick #conspiracyTheories #conspiracyTheory #cults #divination #dystopia #dystopian #egregore #egregores #energyWork #godforms #Metaphysics #nuclearWar #occult #occultism #pagan #paganism #paranormal #psychic #Psychokinesis #servitor #servitors #vampire #vampires #witch #witchcraft #WorldWar #WorldWar3 #WorldWarIII #WW3 #WWIII
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After the stuff I saw today from pagan, occult, and witchy accounts that swear they are leftist anarchist, I am writing off Twitter users. If you have an account on Twitter that isn’t a troll account—bullying Nazis is fine—you are a Nazi.
Anyone who sits at the table with Nazis is a Nazi, and Twitter is the table. You are implicitly donating to the profit of a Nazi entity. It is what it is. If you have an account on Twitter that isn’t a bot account intended to degrade Twitter or a troll account meant to bully Nazis on Twitter, you’re a Nazi. Plain and simple.
#anarchism #anarchist #anarchists #anarchy #Animism #animistic #chaosMagic #chaosMagick #conspiracyTheories #conspiracyTheory #cults #DKMU #ElonMusk #fascism #fascist #leftist #magick #Nazi #Nazis #occult #occultism #pagan #paganism #Twitter #witch #witchcraft
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People are not as mystically, magically, or psychically disconnected as we think they are. Magic that you can interact with is not like a ‘set it and forget it’ thing. It stays associated with you per your potential to interact with it. I’m seeing many people who have the wrong idea about servitors…
Locality can be interchanged with causality in a lot of cases, so we can say entities are connected if they can cause a change in each other. For example, if I throw a ball at someone, there is a scalar of speed and a vector of velocity that carries the ball through the air and hits them in the head; thereby causing a change in their state. If I threw a ball at a person from my house, and they were on the other side of the world, the ball would hit the wall and not them. There is no connection because they are not local. Systems are connected on some level if they can cause a change.
The above example is ephemeral because there is no prolonged connection beyond those moments. Magic is more persistent because a person can interact with a spell they’ve cast or an entity they are interacting with per intent. If you create a spell, servitor, etc., and you can interact with the spell or the servitor, you’re still connected. If you can control a servitor, you are still connected; therefore, the servitor is a part of you. Since the servitor is connected to you via causal relationships, that servitor you created can exert an influence backward on you. What does that mean? That means if you set a servitor after someone and can control that servitor, there is a locality between that person, the servitor, and your mind, so a magician can get into your head or influence the servitor to influence you via that open channel. You can cut by cutting the connection to the servitor; however, that implies you can’t control the entity. It’s fully autonomous. If you cut off your hand, your hand is not a part of you; however, you can’t move that hand anymore. Your ability to exert a causal influence on something implies you are in that thing’s locality and that there exists a potential inverse where you can be pushed back on and influenced. Spells connect things, and servitors are persistent daemons. You are disconnected from a system, network, or entity if there is no potential causal relationship to imply a local connection.
We can think of the psychic plane as having systems of connected concepts and experiences. Personally, I am skeptical of the realism of astrology and astral planes, so I believe that any celestial metaphor or analogy should have some support. We can point to an area that is a cluster of hateful concepts and experiences and we can say that the influence of those clusters is the dominant force for that domain. We say that things are in a solar system based on something called a hill sphere.
The Hill sphere is a concept in celestial mechanics that defines a region around a celestial body (like a planet or a moon) within which its gravitational influence dominates over the gravitational influence of another body. We can simulate a psychic analogy via Graph Theory and force-drawing algorithms like Force Atlas. That will render something that looks like a semantic constellation. In this, there is an attractive force on connecting nodes after a random repulsive force is exerted on every node on the graph. The forces acting on each node are continuously recalculated based on their positions and the strengths of connections (edges) between them. This iterative process continues until the forces reach equilibrium, meaning that the nodes settle into stable positions where the forces balance out. With this, we can see a clustering of concepts, archetypes, patterns, experiences, etc via associativity and their correspondences. Within clusters formed by the Force Atlas algorithm, certain nodes may emerge as more central or influential than others. These central nodes often have higher degrees of connectivity within their respective clusters, meaning they are more strongly connected to other nodes in the cluster. Nodes with higher connectivity within a cluster are akin to bodies with larger hill spheres in celestial mechanics because they exert greater influence over the surrounding nodes within their cluster. So, there is a weak analogical connection between psychic bodies hill spheres in celestial bodies.
While we are physically in the same place, when people engage with psychic planes, a part of them is moving within those domains where there is an implicit influence. Mass is a property that resists acceleration, so we can think of a psychic analogy as what we will or will not do. If you are psychically being displaced as you move towards a domain that exerts a greater influence, you are accelerating towards that thing which implies there is an inverse relationship between the influence of your will and that body. You are paying for your magic through sacrificing bits of yourself, in other words, which includes your sanity.
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