video: 4:18

my partner, JT, was very confused when I changed my online handle to “mothsbane.”

to him, the name was an honorific bestowed upon his first car, Ardith, by one of his best friends, Rogan. one late summer evening in 2014, the pair took the bright red 2002 Pontiac Grand Prix on a road trip. Their plan was to leave Minneapolis to visit a friend attending college at NDSU, but a summer storm had delayed their departure. Tornado watch, heavy rain, the whole works. Between the two waves of the storm, the pair asked themselves, “Do we wait for this storm to pass or do we still go tonight? YOLO.” And so they set off at approximately 1AM, outrunning the next wave of torrential downpour, their path up I-94 lit by forks of lightning.

Having evaded the storm, they later encountered a dense fog cloud of moths covering the rural highway. JT distinctly recalls the sound of hundreds of moths getting splicked upon the hood of the Grand Prix, though he didn’t know the true extent of the carnage until they arrived in Fargo to find that the front of the car was no longer red, but white with the remains of the bugs that used to be. It is worth noting that Rogan is also our friend group’s dungeon master. He has a way of making any seemingly mundane activity into an Epic Quest, and this was no different. Our DM friend looked upon this and proclaimed “Henceforth, she shall no longer simply be Ardith… No, this is now Ardith: Moth’s Bane.”

Naturally, my first thought when JT told me this story back in 2014 was “DUDE. Ardith Mothsbane would be a sick name for my next D&D character.” I tucked the name in my back pocket for later. Even though I had this character in mind, a drow assassin of some kind, I didn’t actually get to play Ardi until 2021, in a one shot my sister Geordan ran for some of her friends. Ardith became a College of Swords bard, known for her knife juggling act, with such precision she could throw a dagger and pin a moth to the wall. Since we were playing online, this group of friends called me Mothsbane interchangeably with Pip or Piper, and I eventually made it my handle across social media.

I like the name for two reasons:
1. It sounds badass, which is reason enough. (Plus my friends sell me HELLA mothman memes, which RULES.)
2. Having very much overthought it and attributed more meaning to it than was entirely necessary, I’ve found that it really reflects my evolving relationship with my faith.

“Pip, wtf are you talking about?”

Consider, for a moment, a cloud of moths under a porch light. I have no idea why they’re drawn to lights the way that they are, but I do know that if they get too close to a hot incandescent bulb, it’ll cook them. Boom. Ex-moth. That’s me with the divine. A lot of my experience in church or with christians has been incredibly harmful, to the point where it would just be easier to be done with the whole thing altogether. That said, there’s just something about warmth and the light that just keeps pulling me back. Do I have any idea what causes this nebulous pull? Pfft, no. I am the moth, and this is the moth’s bane.