Not stretching at all. Assuming you don't have a monty hall or killer GM you do learn creative problem solving in gaming, and you don't have to worry about them getting into the occult from D&D. I never said it was the only way a kid can learn that, I just said that as far as escapist behavior goes at least that type of escapism has an up side.
Well of course Clerics had to pick a patron diety, they're CLERICS. Just like in the real world, if your character wants to devote himself to a god you need to pick the god and flavor of worship, out here in reality you can't become a pastor without picking a religion and denomination. Of course unlike the real world your GM can just decide to blow off that rule and let you be a generic cleric (rhyme purely accidental, but I like it), unless you were playing in an officially sanctioned tournament all rules in D&D are optional, said so in the intro of the DM's Guide. According to the DM's guide "evil" alignment was merely self serving and didn't care about anybody else, "evil" characters didn't really have to be evil just self serving jerks, when I was GMing I always said no evil alignments because good roleplaying of it meant bad team cohesion (nobody ever trusts evil characters to share information or treasure, sharing was vitally important to survival in my campaigns, my motto was "the party that gets along lives"). Of course in the end it's all just roleplaying, what's the functional difference between playing an evil D&D character and playing the Devil in a production of Faust? Finding out how the other half lives can be instructive in why you should be glad you're not part of the other half.
And what happens to that character in the song? They started a summoning and got possessed, now their soul is destroyed and they've become the tool of Satan, a definite warning against the occult.
There's no false dichotomy at all. Yes plenty of artists can write about dark things without praising them, like Scott Harris, Ozzy Osbourne, Eric Bloom, and Ronnie James Dio. None of them praised any of the dark things they sang about (or in Harris' case made others sing about). Wrong wrong wrong, fantasy metal writers are steeped in presenting evil in an unabashed way, taking the covers off and showing its true colors. There's no relativism in fantasy metal, if you play with demons you're hosed, if you open the door to evil forces they will win, the best you can hope for in fantasy if you play with the occult is to merely lose your life.
I chose God and games and music because they are not contradictory. If God is so against fantasy metal then why did he give Dio the perfect voice for it? Dio's God given talent is in making songs about people who do stupid things with evil forces and pay the ultimate price, and to wrap that up with spooky vocal qualities that truly sell how ultimate that price is. But it was people like you that tried to force me to make a choice based on a false dichotomy they inserted, and when given the choice between enjoying the non-sinful pleasures God had placed before me and associating with people that have a knee jerk need to condemn and belittle people I walked away from Christianity until God placed in my life a non-condemning Christian who helped me understand how foolish the condemners are and what a small minority they are. Then I understood, and came back to my faith, and now fight against your kind because I know personally just how damaging you are to people's faith, everything you accuse D&D and fantasy metal and HP of being is what you are, you send people away from the faith, you send people to investigate the occult in search of some alternate way that doesn't have people that condemn others for fun.
I'm not serving two masters, I'm not on a middle path, nothing in my gaming hobbies or music serves Mammon.
And I'm telling you you were at the wrong conventions. Of course with people like you running around condemning people for the music they listen to it's easy to see why those around you would get a false impression of Christianity. I'm against the type of Christianity you represent, Christianity should be about embracing and helping and teaching, not ridiculing and blindly condemning.
if you chose to see reality in the most insulting terms then it is an insult to describe reality as you see it. No it was people like you that drove me from the faith, exactly as you're trying to do now. People creating a false conflict and telling me I need to chose, there is no conflict, and if I truly must chose then I chose to not take the path you took because it obviously leads to a frightening level of narrowmindedness and holier than thou BS.
Weird is a blanket term, depraved people are weird, weirder than most weird people but still weird.
Fandom doesn't hold the status of religion. Merely talking about two demographics of people that have perverts among them, one is fandom, one is Catholics. I do condemn the behavior of these priests, but I don't condemn all Catholics because of them, I understand the difference between the high profile exception to the group and the less news worthy norm. I haven't excused or dismissed anything, if we run into pedophiles in fandom we get rid of them and assist in the investigation, which is something no Catholic will be able to say in total honesty until Cardinal Law is sent back to America to face charges.
Give it a rest. There ARE no charges against Cardinal Law nor will there EVER be charges against Cardinal Law because he broke NO LAWS! Even the Attorney General of the State of Massachusetts had to admit that!!
There are laws NOW that state someone has to report to the state if there is an accusation or any evidence of abuse. At the time Geoghan and Shanley were abusing kids, there were no such laws. The Cardinal was guilty of not doing something about the situation earlier than he did, and has admitted so, but he broke no laws, nor did he ever abuse any children. Almost every one of the cases in the news took place before he ever arrived in Boston. He was left with the aftermath, and he even put policies in place in the Diocese to make sure it never happened again. No one seems to ever mention that.