Truth be told, I haven’t exactly needed to come up with a pen name because I’ve found myself using two monikers more than anything else when I’m not using my own name: (Oerba Dia) Vanille or Serah (Farron), depending on where you find me. This might surprise some people given that I’m… a bit more careful than most about what I publicly post, but I haven’t conclusively come up with a “pen name” that is uniquely mine as much as I use monikers that pay homage to favorite characters of mine from, up until this point, video games that I love. My Discord name happens to be Vanille, and that one was easier to snag because Discord assigns numbers after your name (Name#Numbers), which means that you can probably get the “name” that you want on Discord without having to work hard at it. As for my domain, I was actually surprised that this URL wasn’t registered. Both happen to be favorite characters of mine in the Final Fantasy XIII series.

At any rate, a lot of Satanists have come up with pen names for themselves because they are not in positions to where they can “out themselves” as such — they may not have supportive family members, it may be perilous for their job if that information were to become public knowledge attached to their real names, or for any number of reasons. I wish that we didn’t have to live in a world where one’s religious views, or even lack thereof, meant that we had to safeguard ourselves against others’ criticism, but we still do, even though I would like to take the time to point out the irony in Christians claiming to be persecuted because of their religious views when they are anything but in today’s world. I don’t feel like I can openly wear my necklace from The Satanic Temple in a lot of situations, or even a shirt. I don’t quite feel like I can openly wear some of my other Satanic jewelry (over my shirt, of course, since my skin allergies are that bad) because someone might recognize the lore it comes from and attempt to start something with me “in the name of Jesus”. I don’t feel like I can tell a whole lot of people what my religious views honestly are. So I definitely get the appeal of having a pen name, and have begun to give it some thought, just to have one in the back of my mind in case I ever do authentically need one. (Some people call them “Satanic names”, heh.)

I suppose something will come to me in due time, something that just sounds so right I go, “That’s the one!”

Another thing about certain religions that I despise is their attempt to force themselves onto unwilling participants. Again, the Catholic and Mormon faiths seem to be two of the worst at this, although my only “experience” has been with Catholicism — I was not raised Mormon, with any of my Mormon relatives, and quickly came to reject the Mormon faith, resulting in many of my extended Mormon relatives no longer associating with me as a result, which hasn’t concerned me any since I wasn’t any closer to them than being friends on social media had allowed anyway. But I do know that those two faiths are particularly bad about trying to force individuals who are not even members of their doctrine into following their faith. For instance:

· the Catholic faith “demands” that children born of a Catholic parent be baptized Catholic
· the Catholic faith “demands” that children born of a Catholic parent be brought up Catholic
· if one member of the marriage is Catholic, the marriage must generally take place in a Catholic church, getting a dispensation from this is difficult, and it must follow their marriage protocol even with one
· if a non-Catholic marries a Catholic, they must be “open to life” and not contracept “for it to be valid”
· if a non-Catholic marries a Catholic, they must be monogamous (“faithful for life”) “for it to be valid”
· if a non-Catholic has been previously married, they must pursue an annulment through the Catholic church
· the Catholic church requires that both parties go through various pre-marriage… consults prior to marriage

To me, this is a lot of control being exercised for someone who might never convert to Catholicism, and I can see why it puts a lot of people off to Catholicism. Prior to the wedding that wasn’t with Bub’s father, I eventually put my foot down and stated that I was not willing to do anything that his church asked of me. I was not willing to convert, I was not willing to consent to my older son’s conversion or our son’s baptism, and I was not willing to do anything that his church asked of me in the way of marriage because I was sick and tired of having anything at all to do with his church. It finally managed to get the point across though…

That was when I began to enforce the requirement that I not be expected to participate in the religious activities of any significant other unless we shared that religion in common coming into the relationship. I wasn’t going to go to church with them, I wasn’t going to partake in any of their rituals, I wasn’t going to attend any functions with them. I didn’t want to hear about them if it was something that we didn’t already share in common, and to be frank, if we didn’t share religion in common and their religion was that important to them, I would wonder why we were even in a relationship given what my religious views are.

Some religions I dislike more than others, even though it can be said that I dislike all organized religion equally. The ones that I dislike the most are ones that aggressively try to indoctrinate children, attempting to “make them members” from as early of ages as they possibly can with the intent to raise them to be “faithful members” from infancy or early childhood on up (so religions that actively practice infant baptism and childhood communion are two examples of religions that I do not like and can not stand… I am a bit more lenient when it comes to religions that do not practice these things, especially when they allow the child in question to make the free and fully formed choice to become a practicing member, and I’m not talking about Catholicism’s practice of infant baptism followed by the confirmation that is usually undertaken at or around adolescence, because it is generally almost outright coerced even if they’ll never actually admit to doing it).

Another thing that I dislike about the most… cult-like, or preachy of religions, is the ones that expect the individual’s significant other or prospective spouse to convert alongside them to “make it easier to get married in the church”. It seems like Catholicism and Mormonism, for all the things that they do not have in common with each other, are the worst at this, because they do this the most. In relationships like these — even simply relationships — the Catholic or Mormon individual wants their significant other to convert. They aggressively evangelize their faith to their significant other with the goal of converting them and marrying them in the church, and that sort of courtship has never sat well with me. Bub’s father’s family began coercing me into attending Masses with them against my will when they found out that I was pregnant with his child (or, shall I say, his mother did… after telling him each time that I did not want to attend these things, his response was that “his mother said that I had to come”, which quickly culminated in me bringing my PSP to Masses when I was relegated to their church’s cry room to keep me away from incense used due to my asthma, where I would ignore everything that went on around me and silently play video games with it hidden in the arm of my sweater until I finally got to stop attending everything with them). As mentioned in previous posts, I was eventually rushed into signing up for religious conversion classes intentionally not even allowed to read the forms that I was filling out, and wound up outing myself as a non-believer after the first, last, and only class that I sat through so that I could be dropped from the class, ending me having anything to do with their church since it had become clear that I would never convert or consent to our child’s baptism.

To be honest, I felt used that entire time. I felt like the expectation was “if I attended enough Masses and church functions” (never minding the fact that I intentionally did not fraternize with any parishioners and, through my own conscious actions, did not make a single friend out of any of them) “I would see that this was the one true church, believe in it, and want to convert”. I just wanted to stop attending everything and go home at the end of the day. Looking back on it, I should have felt used longer than I actually did though.

If you have to push your religion on children from infancy or childhood on up, you need to rethink how strong your religious doctrines are if you can’t even give children a chance to form their very own opinions on them.