#IT'S A DRUG IT'S NOT MY FAULT

[anitalianfrie]

Ate too much semolino dolce and now I'm feeling sick

[faeriekit]

Writing the Occult: quick notes for non-practicing hobby authors and other nerds🕯️

Hey. Real talk. If you're writing about occult rituals, magic, the works, whatever, there are some great ways to clean up your act and get some better, more aware accuracy in there. A lot of stuff in the wider consciousness of pop culture is kind of...not correct, or, uh. Should be something you're aware of. For instance:

G*psy is still a slur! No, Romani people aren't more likely to be fortune tellers than anyone else. Quit it with the weird stereotypes. The "g*psy fortune teller" thing hasnt even been on trend since the early 1900s. Move on.

"Voodoo" dolls are a racist perspective of an African-derived traditional religious practice. Vodun is a religion. It's not even a gone or far away religion either; Vodun and Santería have followers and priests all over the US, as do other ATRs. Since. You know. Slavery. The word you're probably looking for is "poppet", which is the term for the tool itself (tiny cloth doll for magical use) as opposed to, like, a whole religion.

A wendigo isn't a catch-all cannibalistic creature; it's part of a wider religious worldview of the Algonquian peoples. Native people have requested that you Stop Talking Abou That— yes, even asking that one YouTuber to Stop That, not that he seems to care. White people seem to cannibalize other people all the time anyway, so I don't see why there's a huge need for a Native scapegoat... There are other supernatural creatures and shapeshifters that eat humans. Pick anything else.

A lot of higher-level occult rituals as writ are just. Straight up antisemitic! If you're writing rituals and your magical language of choice is in Hebrew...hey. Stop that. Same thing goes for "elites who eat babies/drink blood." A some of it is a clumsily handled metaphor for the cannibalistic nature of having an upper class in a society, but a lot of it really is just dressed-up antisemitism in a trench coat. If you're looking up real rituals for worldbuilding...FYI, you may want to glance again before adding it to your work.

Just because ten dudes are standing next to each other in order to do a weird ritual doesn't make them a cult. That's just a ritual. Cults have more specific requirements; ie, whether or not there's religious abuse going on. You can make your weird spooky org have religious abuse, but if they're just, like, high schoolers, they're probably just novice occultists who occasionally hang out together.

I haven't seen anyone use "spirit animal" in a couple years, so that's great! Native people have also requested that we Stop That. Spirit Animal is a specific religious concept we don't have to tread on. Think of a synonym for the concept you're trying to convey; don't steal a word that's already in use for a religious practice. (Same thing goes for totem FYI.)

Hallucinogens often make you throw up. Like. A lot. People do certainly attribute religious visions to them, but also like drink a lot of water and keep a bucket nearby, because the whole scenario is just super disorienting. Most spiritual circles who utilize similar substances will have a trip sitter (someone sober to call 911 if there's an emergency) if they've got the resources.

Making up rituals for your story is totally cool. People invent new rituals all the time. There isn't a standard to be held to on that front unless you outright name a real life religious or occult group they're meant to be part of; THEN people will want standards. Until then, though, you're probably good.

Most TYPES of rituals have, like, a label, though. A ward prevents something from entering a protected space, an invocation brings something forth from within you, a banishment pushes something away from you, a consecration makes something sacred...A lot of these may be obvious to you from pop culture, but if you're going to try and make a character an expert on magic, adding the vocabulary to their lexicon makes their expertise more believable.

There are a ton of ways to exorcise ghosts! Basically every religion has, like, ten of them. If you want to add a little extra flavor on banishing/preventing evil spirits, google [character's religion/culture] [ghosts/spirits] to see what sort of flavor you can add to their specific person.

Occultists and witches and wizards and priests who do magic argue all the time. ALL the time. Interpersonal drama is real and it can Get You.

It's traditional to do certain specific rituals naked. Just FYI. It's not required. Just traditional. Utilize this knowledge for narrative potential... or don't. I'm not your boss.

Yeah, sometimes there's blood; your mileage may vary narratively. Most people don't go for the whole knife thing —you can get lancets at any drug store—but maybe your character is especially dumb or otherwise desperate. Palms and fingers hurt the most knife-wise; if your character knows what they're doing, it won't be their hands.

The keeping skulls around thing is real too, if legally and financially difficult to arrange in many cases. It's usually animal though. Human remains have a lot of laws in the states and, obviously, relatives want to keep their family close to their family — still, narratively, your mileage may vary.

The "White magic" and "Black magic" dichotomy is racialized. No, seriously. The things people demonize about dark magic— soul magic, necromancy, zombies, love/control spells, etc— are all really warped versions of Ancestor worship and other spiritual practices from African Traditional Religious beliefs. Well, the whole Zombie thing is actually a holdover from slavery and it's more about forcing ex-slaved peoples into performing more labor even after their death while White people are afraid of traditional Black spiritual resistance against colonial religious oppression— I'm going too deep into this, just trust me that if a dichotomy says that White is good and Black is bad, there's probably something hinky going on.

And, finally:

Ouija boards are sold at Barnes and Noble by Hasbro for $25, and a tarot deck can retail for as little as $20 from Spirit Halloween or Spencer's. No, they can't summon demons from the astral into your house. Can they talk to ghosts? Up to you; it's your story. Are cheap paper board and plastic planchette powerful enough to murder people, though...? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ My magic 8 ball says that the odds are unlikely.

Obviously, you can do whatever you want with your work— I'm not your dad and I can't stop you, but if you're the kind of person who's like, hey, maybe I do want to prune out accidental racial slurs from my vocabulary...hey! This list is for you! Halloween is a time to get spooky! Get scary! Get booped, even; still, if you want to have an underlying thread of what the occult looks like in practice, you might want to dust off a couple of mid Magic/Witchcraft/Spiritual/Occult books from your local library and flip through 'em for ideas. There's some fun stuff in there.

Like the sacred blowtorch ;)

Happy Halloween, everyone! 👻

[foreverchangingfandomsao3]

Six Sentence Sunday

This is from another of my Codywan week works @codywanweek and I'm enjoying writing crack for once!

It seemed pointless. They were stuck in a gunship, barely close enough to the planet’s surface to be considered out of orbit and the Separatists were in a bunker with a single entrance. They had no intel, no time to prepare, and no knowledge about Obi-Wan’s condition. “You know, that truly is an awful beard,” Obi-Wan said, his voice coming through the unit almost perfectly clear, the words ever so slightly slurred which made him suspect a sedative, but also free of pain. It was also the same tone that he used in the med bay when he eventually got straight answers out of the man, polite but also a little exasperated. “You’re doing no favours to yourself by letting it grow.” “I did not bring you here to discuss my beard.” “You should have.”

[yuri-for-businesswomen]

someone has never lived with a coke addict. lmao

no but for real i see these posts a lot and while the basic idea is 100 % correct (drug addiction and homelessness are not personal or moral failures and people affected deserve respect and dignity), they usually take a direction or have implications i dont agree with.

first off, drug addiction is not a class issue. people of all backgrounds are drug addicts. ceos too. so i dont know what this has to do with leftism? as someone who struggles with substance abuse and for that reason has lived with and been around addicts, there are good reasons for people to be biased against them. in active addiction, many people are erratic, unpredictable, and egoistic. being wary of active addicts is self-preservation, not „bourgeois“ or whatever the reference to leftism is supposed to imply. this is also partly a gendered issue because men tend to exhibit addiction, egoism, and aggression at higher rates than women.

secondly, especially at the intersection of homelessness and drug addiction - i see a lot of these posts taking the direction of „mind your business if a homeless man is next to you mumbling to himself“ etc - it seems these people also romanticise what drug addiction with nothing to lose can do to a person. a friend of mine was hit in the face by a homeless man walking by, someone else i know was stabbed by a homeless man after they took him in. just because someone is underprivileged you dont have to stop listening to your insticts and keeping your distance to erratic and intoxicated men who seem like they might do something unpredictable. this doesnt just mean homeless men by the way, i dont trust any men exhibiting this behavior, and yeah would possibly call the cops if someone like that hung around my home or work (never have though).

on the other hand, when a homeless woman was hanging out in the hallway i let her be. my neighbor wanted to call the cops but i told her not to. personally i dont even care if she shoots up there, but if i had kids i might not want her around either.

are homeless drug addicts vulnerable and more likely to be harmed than harm someone else? yeah. do cops and doctors treat homeless people like shit? yeah. these are important conversations to have, but i wish they would happen without romantisation.

talk to any woman who has worked with homeless men, myself included - marginalisation is not virtue. many still harrass and even assault women. and these posts never take a gendered perspective: how most homeless and drug addicted women land in prostitution, how they are not safe in homeless shelters because of the men, etc.

im not saying op here said all of this but from the tone (and the tags and reblogs) it struck me as one of those posts that shames people for being alert around drug addicts and alcoholics when there is ample reason to, especially if youre a woman and theyre a man. and they never take a gendered perspective which is really important in this context, as it usually is.

[wayward-sherlock]

just thinking about how will COULD have turned to drugs like jonathan (or something worse) to deal with the fact that mike was so distant from him but he instead chose to paint mike a picture that reminded him of a childhood that he wasn’t even sure mike wanted anymore and will byers chose to hope and. i just think that says a lot about his character

[irhabiya]

i genuinely hate when professors interrupt my presentations so much. i was already speeding through it it's all pharma and there's so much important shit to cover and she's like "skip skip khalas yallah faster" and THEN SHE COMPLAINED THAT I SEEMED OUT OF BREATH WHILE PRESENTING LADY WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME -_-!!!!

[uncanny-tranny]

Harm reduction is important because people do not deserve to die or become gravely injured because of addiction, accidents, or improper care. The existence of harm reduction sights, free needle exchange sights, drug testing locations, and education is not endorcing the behaviour - it is making sure people do not die, contract bloodborne illnesses, or otherwise be put at risk. These are human beings we are talking about, addiction or no.

[hurtmyfavsthanks]

“I love you. I love you. I love you.”

Hero tried to pull away from Villain’s caress, the metal cuffs binding them to the chair stopping them from getting far. This was wrong. “No, you don’t! Listen, you’re not in your right mind. Superhero—they thought drugging you with a love potion would make you switch sides,” Hero had tried to stop it before it happened, but now the best they could do was try to fix it. “If you just let me go, we can wait this out!”

Villain stared, pupils dilated and eyes hazy with artificial infatuation. After a long moment, they smiled. “Oh, you’re adorable, baby. Of course I know that!” They pulled themselves closer, practically sitting in Hero’s lap. “I don’t care how it happened anymore. I feel good, lovely and happy and perfect. I don’t care if it’s fake. I wanna feel like this forever, I want you to feel this way too.”

One arm wrapped around Hero’s neck, Villain reached into a pocket of their uniform and produced a thin glass vial. Hero recognized the pink, syrup-like fluid within instantly. “Superhero and I made a deal. I stay out of trouble, and they make sure there’s enough of this for the both of us.” 

Hero felt dread pooling in their stomach as Villain opened the vial, their smile turning almost manic with glee. “Aren’t you excited? We’re going to be happy forever.”

[solplease]

OKAY. DONE. the update was SOOOOO fucking good i enjoyed that sm

[sophiethewitch1]

why am i like, cartoonishly such an ao3 author. can I not have a single break. anyways once again thinking next chapter might be late, very very likely this time because there's two days left and I'm not even half way. my excuse is 1: had a medium allergic reaction where my tongue was swelling, I could barely breathe and it left me feeling very awful the next two days and 2: my mum totally accidentally gave me really strong opioids, the ones I took when I had my wisdom teeth taken out. i was so high I couldn't walk on my own <3 I'm like, fine I guess but my mind has been total brain fog all week and I'm only now pulling out of it. i wish I was making this shit up honestly my life is a clown show!!!!

[jessaerys]

i started watching the queens gambit and unbelievably predictably i am already obsessed with beth. which is unfortunate given the current anya taylor joy oversaturation in the cultural zeigiest

[s3d4t3m3]

Feeling like it's time to blow my brains out I need to lock tf in before I get kicked out of college cause my gpa so low I'm so much better than this I was a honors student man why am i ruining my life what the hell am I doing I used to balance the party girl lifestyle so much better but than it just started to be me waiting for the next high I need get a grip

[selfinflictedgunshotwound]

i'm kind of amazed how most of the stardew marriage candidates just want you to be their manic pixie dream whatever by agreeing with everything they like and plying them with compliments or praise or whatever (which is fine but a bit. Much) but for shane his romance is just you being there for him while he figures his own shit out... dunno why i never wanted to romance him before he's so good

[lususnatura]

true friendship is making pot brownies as a gift for someone using marijuana you grew in your garden xxx (Blamore would do this. He would make pot brownies for his friend if it knew they partaked in edibles JSJSJ)

[mrsmarlasinger]

DXM truly has such a terrible body load. Is anybody surprised that I'm high off my ass rn

[caterpillarinacave]

I may be stupid