#because that's the context it was originally created in

[moons-of-firdaws]

Artists create art for an audience. Sometimes that audience is you and your close-knit group of friends with your OCs; sometimes that audience is x shippers in y fandom; sometimes the audience is a community you're a part of — the queer community, the neurodivergent community etc and sometimes an audience is society at large as often is the case in works that are intended as social critique or exploration.

Art is created to express, evoke and/or communicate a feeling or thought.

Discourse around "don't create xyz for attention" should be understood as discourse around social media, and not art. When applied to art, the premise is erroneous and flawed because it's misplaced / displaced from its original context.

i do write for attention, actually, because that's a normal reason to create art

[anamericangirl]

I'm honestly really lost about something.

I've heard people claim that the Bible verse that said "A man lying with a man is an abomination" actually said "A man lying with a boy is an abomination" in the original language(s).

And since I don't speak any of these languages, I have no idea if this is true. To me, it's just as likely that there really was a mistranslation (if not a deliberate agenda) as it is that people are just trying to make the Bible more politically correct (since unlike homosexuality, an adult having sex with a kid is something that we can all agree is wrong).

Is there any, like, further debate on this, I guess? Like, you've got what we originally had and agreed on (that being that this Bible verse says being gay is wrong), and then you've got people saying "Oh, that's actually not true!" Do you know if anyone's made a response to that? And if someone made a response to that response, and so on and so forth?

Thank you in advance. This is tearing me apart...

It's very easy to get lost amongst those claims so I don't blame you and it's hard to know what the truth is if you don't know where to look.

That claim, however, is not true. It's a claim that's been around for a while and many biblical scholars and theologians have devoted their lives to studying that exact claim and they all always come to the same conclusion: that it's a direct condemnation of two grown men have sexual relations with each other.

In Corinthians, when Paul is talking about homosexuality, the word he uses is "arsenokoitai" which is actually a word he coined. He created a compound word with the words "arsenos" and "koiton".

"koiton" means to lie with or "bed" and "arsenos" means "a man" and was in fact the word used in the book of Leviticus for "a man." Paul knew what he was doing here and used that word specifically in his creation of the new word because the people he was speaking to at the time would have understood that to be a condemnation of two adult men sleeping together.

Jews who lived during the biblical time period considered homosexuality to be sinful because of that verse in Leviticus. No one who was living around that time interpreted that law as a condemnation of pedophilia or men sleeping with boys (although that absolutely is condemned in the Bible just not this particular verse), they all saw it as a condemnation of homosexuality. The idea that it's a mistranslation is a more modern take. But the fact that people of the time period understood it as a condemnation of homosexuality is a big hint that that's what it was.

Also, if you read the Bible and are looking to understand what it says about homosexuality, it's not insignificant that every time it's mentioned it's mentioned in a negative way. There is not a single positive reference to homosexuality anywhere in the Bible, which is another big hint that Leviticus is not a mistranslation.

And again, the idea has been debunked by scholars who have spent years studying it and you won't find a serious scholar who was able to conclude that Leviticus is talking about men taking advantage of boys and the debate is still only had by people who don't really understand the historical context and haven't done any real research into the topic. The claim has long been debunked by actual scholars.

Hope that was helpful and was able to provide at least a little insight into the issue for you!

[anbaisai]

Finally had time to sit down and write, but honestly there’s not much to be said other than thank you to everyone who wrote a message on my tree! I really enjoyed reading every single message and screenshotting to save them into a folder for when I need a lil boost ww (including one from Mr. Viper himself above that got a laugh out of me, thanks Jamil really appreciate you thinking I’m cool)

Some sappiness under the cut:

I never expected to receive this much support for my silly yume/oc ship content when I began posting, and I really don’t have the words to express how grateful I am. I’ve met many wonderful people through this fandom, and also just had lots of fun in general making art. I mean it when I say I genuinely never had this much motivation and inspiration to create for any fandom (or original content) in the past. There was a long, long period in my life during which trying to find even a crumb of motivation to draw felt impossible. There was always some reason that I couldn’t - be it school/life being too busy, feeling too tired, having other stuff to do first, etc. I thought I’d never rediscover my love and passion for art, until I finally pushed myself to design my Yuu for real (instead of just thinking about it) and then everything just snowballed from there. (For context, I began playing TWST in 2020 and, despite being very much in love with it, only began drawing anything for it this year.)

I have such a massive list of ideas that I still want to draw (plus several asks that I want to answer that I just haven’t had the time to yet), so I’m certainly going to be kept busy for a while. After previously making every excuse possible for not drawing, I’ve learned that yeah, once you really love something you will squeeze time out for it no matter how hard things get, because it kills you not to. All those times when I wondered when I’d ever be able to draw as much as my favourite artists now feel like a distant relic of the past, and I have Twisted Wonderland (especially Jamil) and this community to thank for it. If anyone reading this is going through something similar, I promise it gets better - you will need to put in the effort to make it start, but you will get there.

There’s also my past experiences of being in fandoms that, well, did not welcome yume/self-shipping type content. If I so much as thought of creating any, the fear of being ridiculed would make me back away from the idea immediately. I’m glad to see that sentiment seems to be no longer the norm, but also the TWST fandom has been one of the most supportive of yume content I’ve ever seen. To everyone wanting to participate but has been hesitating, you absolutely should! My only regret is not starting sooner, seriously. In a sense I feel like I'm fulfilling a childhood dream of mine, and all of my past hesitation and anxiety just dissipated once... as cringe as it sounds - once love took over. So go pour your love and passion into that character you adore, they deserve it.

Anyways, wishing everyone a happy holidays and happy new year! Here’s to another year of enjoying TWST and creating for the things we love ❤

[the-far-bright-center]

Re: TCW as meta commentary

A little while ago, I commented on a post about the electrocution that Anakin experiences during The Clone Wars animated series, but since my response turned into a bit of a rant I decided to make a separate post instead. It’s become almost a meme these days to say that Anakin must have 'brain damage' from all that electrocution during the Clone Wars. I realise that tumblr just likes to joke around, but I personally get frustrated with these sorts of 'readings' because it's just...not how I personally view these kinds of things at all. When I watched TCW back in the day, I just presumed that the reason there was so much electrocution was to give a ‘nod’ to Vader being so averse to Palpatine’s Force-lightning in RotJ. Having Anakin tortured countless times in a similar manner to how Luke is at the end of RotJ then explains why Anakin/Vader can’t abide seeing his son tortured that way any longer (he knows all-too well what it’s like!) and finally snaps and kills Palpatine. The fact he hates and is maybe even terrified of Palpatine’s Force-lightning by that point (knowing it will almost certainly kill him) also lends his final sacrifice in RotJ another level of pathos and heroism.

Of course, one could just dismiss the electrocution as the writers being sadistic and saying ‘let’s torture Anakin all the time’ (which is definitely part of it, lol), but I also feel like there's more going on there. Everything in the (original Lucas-era) seasons of TCW was constructed as a sort of ‘meta analysis’ of the PT x OT saga, explored via the Clone Wars-era characters and themes. One of the reasons TCW was even made in the first place was to shed further light on the Prequels at a time when SW fans were still fairly hostile to it. And particularly to shed light on the Prequels in relation to the Original Trilogy. That’s why Anakin was explicitly shown to be the Chosen One in the Mortis Arc—because at the time there was still tons of confusion from fans on the subject (despite Lucas confirming it many times in interviews) and the show was trying to clarify that.

I think people these days get tripped up because they’re trying to take every detail of TCW way too literally. Some aspects of the show can work on a literal level, but not everything. Simply due to the fact it's an animated series (where the rules of gravity don’t even apply at times), there is no way that every single moment in it could be considered 100% canon anyway. Acknowledging that some elements of the show couldn’t possibly be meant to be taken literally was easier to do during the pre-Disney times when the series was still just another entry into the Expanded Universe. It’s only because Disney has now absorbed TCW into their ‘official canon’ (and keep churning out content related to it—something I’m NOT happy about) that there’s all this sort of external ‘pressure’ to view it as completely canon.

Speaking of which, I’ve noticed a lot of polarised opinions on the series lately, ranging from people who accept it wholesale to those who flat out hate it and see it in the same vein as the current Disney material. I can't comment on the 'final season' released under Disney because I never watched it and probably never will. That being said, I personally have a great fondness and nostalgia for the 2008-2013 series, in part because I watched it with my husband when we first got together. If the OT represents my childhood and the PT represents my teenage years, then TCW is from a charmed, golden era just prior to the Disney takeover when I was bonding with my husband over our shared love of SW. Sure, I have issues with some parts of it at times, but it was never a big deal for me in the past because I never viewed the series as canon on the same level as the main six-film saga. Rather, I've always seen it as an interesting illumination on the saga, some of which I agree with and some of which I don’t, and some of which I accept into my own personal headcanon, and some of which I discard.

Things I adore and have taken fully into my heacanon: Ahsoka's character and Snips and Skyguy's relationship. They mean too much to me to not do so. Likewise, all the cute, romantic, and (positive) emotional Anidala moments, as well as the Obitine ship (aka the only ship for Obi-Wan that ever made sense from my perspective). I also view Rex and several of the other Clones as canon additions, because fleshing out the Clone characters was always very important worldbuilding and I'm glad it was included. Similarly, I love all the humorous moments and banter, especially in the early seasons. But on the other hand, there are several story arcs in the later seasons that are either too ‘out there’, blatantly ooc, or even incredibly disturbing (Zygerrian arc, for instance), and I refuse to accept these as literal ‘canon’. Nevertheless, I can't fully dismiss them either because there are still moments of these episodes that I enjoy and value. In those instances, I sort of step outside the story for a moment and look at it from a meta perspective to discern what they were trying to do and say with those storylines, since taking them literally would be too jarring. Likewise, no matter how many times I watch TCW (and even having seen most of Rebels as well), I’m NEVER going to accept the idea that Maul was somehow still alive and wreaking havoc during the Twilight of the Republic and even during the Dark Times. I don’t accept it as canon because I feel it detracts not only from the impact of the Duel of the Fates in TPM, but also from the symmetry and beauty of the perfectly mirrored PT x OT saga as a whole. I can acknowledge that some of the Maul storylines in the animated series were interesting and even emotionally impactful (and can enjoy Sam Witwer's voice acting for him), while also sticking to my guns and saying ‘this whole premise is just plain silly, I am not accepting this as real’. (I would have actually been more amenable to Maul if he'd been 'ressurected' in a different manner, but that's a subject for another post.)

So, while I enjoy TCW, I personally think it’s more enjoyable if you stop believing everything in it is meant to be taken completely literally or realistically, and instead view it as part fun, entertaining romp, part ‘missing moment’ fanfic, and part serious (if somewhat dark and twisted) meta-commentary.

[instantpansies]

oh my word THANK YOU!!! i've been trying to say this since the wicked movie repopularized all of the "wicked is canon" stuff, but you've put it in a way i wasn't able to. YES. certainly wicked is allowed to be a derivative work that recontextualizes Oz. assuming that whatever is in wicked retroactively and automatically changes details about the story (ie, that the scarecrow and the tin woodman knew each other before the events of Wonderful Wizard and/or the MGM film) is simply incorrect.

i'm all for incorporating a body of work that may not be fully compatible into a coherent canon that works as an alternative parallel to the original. i think it's completely fine and understandable that people are hooked on wicked and will want to understand some characters through the lens of wicked. but assuming that wicked's popularity makes it truly canon, or assuming that the history it presents is accurate to Baum's Oz, is ignorant to both the original context of the Baum books and the long history of Oz adaptation.

i'm also a bit of a hater, as i personally believe that understanding Wonderful Wizard characters through a lens of wicked, especially the musical but also the book, is a less interesting way of analyzing the text and symbolism present in that story than either the Baum novel or the MGM film presents as each stands alone.

wicked is, certainly, its own thing. of course it exists in the context of over a hundred years of adaptation before it, but that context is simply not known by most people. it must be able to stand on its own, and i believe it does. but when this retroactive wicked lens is applied to that context and history uncritically, we will run into problems.

i almost want to blame the seemingly recent, but really just more visible shift in fandom to a need for everything to be canon and confirmed? like, it can be difficult to reconcile in our minds that so many different versions of oz are allowed to exist and don't have to be compatible. wicked "confirms" things viewers are left wondering about after the mgm film, so therefore it must be canon, and therefore it's appropriate to correct people on facts they "get wrong" when they contradict wicked canon. that's how the thinking seems to work, at least in my observation. and that way of thinking seeps its way into the secondary or deeper oz fandom, which has led to (in my view) a sort of soft shift from Baum-centric understanding of oz as a whole to a binary star system where Baum and Maguire are seen as co-creators of a more true or real world and story. i'm exaggerating, certainly, but i've seen this shift occur over time. i hesitate to bring this up bc it sounds like i'm whining about the fandom's natural changes and how things aren't the way they used to be, and i guess i am. i digress.

anyways, your original point. yes!!! while oz became baum's most profitable endeavor, and throughout the series you can see him sort of wishing his other books were more profitable so he could expand in different directions, that doesn't mean he didn't care about continuity or cohesion at all. i'd argue he cared more about cohesion and telling a story that made sense and continued to make sense as it was expanded, than he cared about maintaining particular canon details through the whole series. oz changed as baum's tastes, needs, and audience changed, and that is just as important as the changes that would be added by adaptation later on. (hell, many oz fans don't think of the 1902 musical or the silent films as canon, despite them being created by Baum, both because they're less well-known and because they do change things up to better fit their respective media and contexts). this sense of inconsistency, whether overblown or minimized, doesn't mean that wicked is canon compliant with the baum novels. wicked directly contradicts baum's work in some cases--which again, is completely fine. it's a derivative work that takes certain aspects of the original books and the mgm film, synthesizes them in a grimdark expansion on especially the political aspects of the world, and seeks to tell a unique story that allows you to think about Wonderful Wizard and MGM in a different way. but it is not itself an explanation for Baum's supposedly undercooked or unfinished world. it is not itself a part of the original story (i mean this in the context of canonicity of baum's work. oz fans know how complicated oz canon is.) but instead is--as it claims to be--another branch on the complex tree of oz adaptations.

tldr. wicked does not "explain" anyone's actions in Wonderful Wizard or MGM. it seeks to provide an alternative context, or an alternative explanation, certainly. but it does not retroactively "fix" the story. it's perfectly fine to think about the original story or the mgm film in the context of wicked, if you like the alternative history it provides. policing others' adaptations and understandings of the story, or implying or directly stating that wicked should be incorporated into others' headcanons or interpretations or adaptations, or claiming that wicked is canon simply because baum didn't care about canon so everything is canon, is not helpful or productive or good. in fact, that actively makes oz analysis less fun, in my opinion. i hope my point is made here i've been trying to say this for months but as usual i was completely unable to get my thoughts across until acted on by an outside force (seeing this post). so thanks!!

I've seen a lot of people lately harping about how "Wicked isn't canon to the Oz universe", "it's just glorified fanfiction", etc., and I can't express how silly that is, and how annoyed it makes me every time I hear it, lol. Baum's original Oz books were never meant to be some canonical series — they contradict each other constantly; Baum called it a "fairy story" with loose cohesion at best; and it only became a series at all because the first one got popular enough that Baum felt a duty to the fandom to keep making more (even after he had wanted to end it). And the 1939 film is every bit as much "fanfiction" as Wicked — it changes the story in both major and minor ways, including a complete shift of framing (i.e., making Oz into a dream rather than a real place).

Maguire's great contribution to the overarching legacy and lore of Oz was to harmonize the very weak "canon" of the older works with a different shift in framing: recontextualizing all of the prior Oz material as a revisionist history (going off of Baum's own idea framing of himself as a "Royal Historian of Oz"), and attempting to tell "the true story" behind the other works (fictively of course — we're never meant to literally think Maguire's version preceded Baum's, irl). In literary studies, this is called an urtext. The Wicked Years and its adaptations are as much "fanfiction" as the 1939 film: it's just self-aware of that fact in a way that earlier works weren't, and uses that perspective to deconstruct the material and explore deeper (and darker) themes — not simply adapting or reimagining the original text (as the 1939 movie did), but actively challenging it; interrogating it. It's not meant to be "canon" as such: it asks you to ask whether (and why) there is such a thing, and what that might say about the stories that we are meant to literally believe in, in real life.

[roseworth]

i think theres this idea in the general public that the "best" fanfic gets turned into real books like 50 shades of grey. but the truth is that the best fanfic can never be published as an actual book because its intricately woven into the canon material so its inseparable even if you change the names

[kagoutiss]

*complaining for no reason again because i am bored* i need more ppl to know that these. are all the same person these are literally canonically all the exact same individual person im begging u

literally almost all the ganondorfs are the exact same individual and almost all the ganons are the exact same individual, almost all the ganondorfs & ganons are the same exact person just in different forms and circumstances. except for FSA and maybe whatever the fuck is going on with TotK ganondorf but i still think it’s weird that he still has golden eyes & rounded ears when even the gerudo in TotK’s ancient past dont, but anyway ashfjsbfjsn

[labyrinthofthestar]

da*2. is a game

[mostofthingsmostofthetime]

Hey THG fans thanks to somone else on here (I'm so sorry but I can't remember the name of your blog) I've kind of become obsessed with making book accurate (or as close as I can get) picrews of Hunger Games characters & now that I'm done with Katniss & Peeta I wanted to show you all some other characters I've been working on. This is my interpretation of Delly Cartwright.

At school

In free time

On Reaping Day

In District 13

[br1ghtestlight]

this is so funny to me actually bcuz this is 100% how i talk abt my characters ages. i know what YEAR they were born and i know what rheir ages are supposed to be at the start of the story but i dont actually know when it takes place?? im really bad at math. There was a moment where rainbow was supposed to be 23 and i somehow accidentally made her 17 lmfao

[solradguy]

Ky’s Mom is Asuka if I remember the ancient texts correctly /j

Lmfao you're so right. I am ashamed for forgetting such vital lore.... When Asuka R. Kreutz man-birthed Ky Kiske....

[leapdayowo]

giggling and kicking my feet when I realize x, y, and z from different stories I’ve experienced over my life influenced parts of a story I’m writing. Like yes, this concept from an author 40 years older than me clearly influenced how I write this character, or this world building element was loosely inspired from bits and pieces I’ve seen of a fandom I’m not in. It makes me happy that I can carry the legacy of those stories, thoughts, and moments and how wonderful it would be to encourage my (hypothetical) future audience to find these outside influences. That stories can be connected not because the worlds in them are necessarily connected, but that the people in this world can be connected and inspire each other

[totally-not-an-awkward-okapi]

Delighted to learn the comic cover I originally chose to parody for my dream girl was actually a parody of a much older cover with a much meaner subtitle.

[oswaldddavis]

(They think the other is a idiot)

[sonknuxadow]

I could see Ken Penders point with saying how similar the Sonic Chronicles games were to his Knuckles comics and getting upset with that since there was in fact a lot of similarities, granted they were all based around alot of common tropes but he did 'there's a secret society of Echidna, one of the leaders is evil, girl Echidna defects and helps main characters save the day' first in official Sonic media. And considering that his own comic was tanking and Chronicles was set for something like a promised trilogy then yeah, I'd be upset too. But then there's other things like him trying to claim Scourge (Penders made Evil/Anti Sonic but it was Flynn who gave him the redesign) or even trying to claim that it was his idea to make Sonic stand on the wings of the tornado and then I just stop caring.

That and he's trying to sell Sonic NFTs and thinks that he owns Shade because Sega hasn't uses her since the lawsuit.

yeah thats the thing i dont think its inherently bad for him to want ownership of stuff hes made and i can see where hes coming from with the sonic chronicles stuff but then like you said he does things like take sole credit for scourge despite most people who like him liking him based on what other artists and writers did with him, act like he owns the concept of knuckles having a dad, claiming ownership of and selling nfts of designs he didnt make after getting angry over anything similar to something he did being used, etc etc . so no he really doesnt deserve to be defended lmao

[saccharineomens]

They’re talking about Jack. Spoiler alert, they’re both right.

Based off that scene from Dr. Horrible!