Thoughtlets: Seven Deadly Sins as Temptors

From ShifterCat here.

For a while now, I’ve been discussing a frequent problem with anthropomorphic portrayals of the Seven Deadly Sins: six of them will be drawn to elicit disgust… except for Lust, who’ll be a bodacious babe. It’s like, “Yes, straight male audience, here are the parts of yourself you should fear. Plus that one, who is totally the fault of evil wimminz.”

Which: no, guys, you can’t have it both ways. Either portray ALL of them as tempting, or ALL of them as horrible warnings. And if you’re going with the latter, then Lust ought to be a man in a dirty raincoat, lurking outside a schoolyard.

(Credit where it’s due: Edmund Spenser, way back in the sixteenth century, portrayed Lust as a gross dude in The Faerie Queene.)
I was discussing this with Christopher, and he asked, what might the Seven Deadly Sins look like if, instead of simply embodying their sin, they were designed to elicit that sin?

Here are my ideas:

Wrath is primarily a talk-radio host, though he also publishes his rants in book and blog format. He whips his audience into a fury against a host of enemies, some obvious, others ill-defined. On social media, he commands a veritable army of internet trolls. His followers are both sore losers and sore winners: as long as dissenters exist, they cannot consider themselves victorious. And that will never happen, because Wrath is always ready to point out a new enemy.

Gluttony looks like a kindly grandmother. Everything that comes out of her kitchen looks, tastes, and smells absolutely delicious, so it hardly seems like a burden when she chivvies you to eat, even when you’re already full. But she always makes far too much, and throws out all of her leftovers. Meals that could have fed a soup kitchen for a week congeal in a dumpster outside, crawling with maggots.

Avarice is a corporate lobbyist. He convinces the rich that they owe the public nothing, and the poor that they are but temporarily embarrassed millionaires. At his smiling suggestion, laws restricting businesses’ power are jettisoned, or else rendered powerless. He speaks of “the free market” as though it were a wise and benevolent deity, though he has also been known to argue Social Darwinism and Prosperity Gospel without even pausing for breath.

Vanity is a motivational speaker. She tells her audiences that they are all especially gifted and deserve everything they want -- they just have to focus on it really hard. Anyone who tells them that they’re being selfish, or evading other responsibilities, is just dragging them down; anyone to whom bad things happen brought it on themselves by being so negative. Her Facebook page shares a lot of pseudoscience and conspiracy theory, framing believers as smarter than the masses.

Sloth comes off as a good-natured stoner. He’s always happy to share his shabby couch and his coffee-table covered with game controllers, TV remotes, and an endless assortment of substances to drink, smoke, or inject. Schoolwork can wait. Tell your boss you’re sick again. Someone else’ll do the other stuff. Just take it easy. Don’t be a buzzkill.

Envy runs a string of popular magazines. The cover models are Photoshopped into impossible beauty; the ads feature products well out of most readers’ price range. The text portions contain “health plans” that are recipes for failure, celebrity gossip that is by turns fawning and venomous, and advice columns warning against “man-stealers” or “girl-stealers”.

Lust is a pick-up artist. He doesn’t simply advocate promiscuity, but employs an entire dialect encouraging straight men to think of women as objects to be evaluated, used, and discarded. Though his focus is primarily on heterosexual males, he also argues that it’s “naturally masculine” for gay men to treat their partners in a similar fashion.

Thoughtlets: Cult Ketchup Recipe

Recipe: Ketchup Base

Ingredient:
Plum Tomatoes, 10lb can
1 small onion, small dice
Olive Oil, 2 tbsp
Tomato paste, 6 cans
Dark Brown Sugar, 1.5 cups
Cider Vinegar, 2 ½ cups
Salt, 2 tbsp


Directions:
Heat the sauce pan to medium and add the oil. Add the onions and sweat. Add the
tomatoes, tomato paste, brown sugar, cider vinegar and salt. Allow to simmer for 30
minutes. Puree with a beurre mixer until smooth. Strain through a fine china cap, pushing
the mixture through.

a beurre mixer is also know as an immersion blender. you can just dump it all in a regular blender, though

huh. the recipe doesn't specify the san marzanos. i'm surprised, avalon insisted upon them. it affects the flavor hugely.

Atrocity Rose

Ah, beloved, the hour grows late, and you grow weary. Do not deny it, dearest, for my eyes are keen and can see each and every one of your mortal frailties. If it pleases you, I shall tell you of what you ask. But remember there are things that are better off being unknown. There are things out there in the planes. Monstrous things beyond the likes of which the common tongue's vocabulary can describe.

I would share the experience with you, beloved. You know that I can open my mind to yours, to let you browse the width and breadth of all I am like an open book. I can, but I plead with you to not ask this of me. There lies within me a fragment of a greater creature, a mere shadow of a reflection of a mote of her majesty. She has no name, dearest, for where she dwells she is everything. She is the beginning, she is the end, and whatever is not of her is consumed and devoured until it is. Like I was.