#i understand most answers to my questions are 'its fantasy Christianity so all of these things are God/Satan parallels'

[silverskye13]

Lady Merrewin: You have to make him respect you. Cut off his arm if you have to.

King Eliam the Everlasting, watching from fantasy heaven probably:

[toskarin]

So elves are angels?

if you're going off my description, which I largely lifted from tolkien, the answer is "not especially"

tolkien style elves are beholden to the concepts of fate and prophecy, but that's not a trait unique to them. they're just kind of especially fateful guys

as a fair warning, you've triggered a fantasy infodump here and I've quarantined it below the readmore

this is all going off of like... loose memories of a time where I was more fresh off of reading tolkien when I was younger, so I'm abridging a lot here. don't cite me to anyone or you'll probably be wrong. also how literally this is intended to be understood depends on whether you take the elves' word for how the elves came into being.

which you might.

men* and elves are the children of ilúvatar, more properly eru ilúvatar, who you can here understand as the closest thing in the legendarium to the christian god

*: understood to mean humans, including hobbits for the sake of this explanation, although that's left a bit vague because hobbits are thematically the most normal guys possible. they don't even feel much of a drive to give themselves a creation myth

elves were given immortality, ethereal beauty, really good memory, and incredible talents for creation. they were the first type of incarnate, from the time when the stars were coming into being

men didn't come around for a while after that. men are mortal, but will inherit the earth and can break away from prophecy and fate, specifically as it pertains to the music of the ainur, which is kind of hard to summarise without just saying "it's the scheme of how things unfold that was laid out from the moment everything was created, destiny itself"

to skip over a bunch of more complicated details, this means that elves are a union of body and soul, like men. they're intimately bound to the workings of the world, but most things that aren't men are also bound to it, and being bound to it doesn't necessarily mean you're aligned with it

there are entities that directly serve the god figure on a few different tiers. the god figure's first spirit creations were ainur*, and then the ainur who descended into the song of creation became lower forms of divinity called the valar and maiar, with the maiar being the lower-ranked spirits that assisted the valar

*: same ones mentioned in the context of the song of the ainur, since they wove the world more or less as proxies for ilúvatar

the valar take the roles of sort-of-proxy gods, while the maiar work to assist them and occasionally incarnate into mortal form when something needs REALLY fine tuning. the valar and maiar are much closer to what you're looking for, as far as angels go! (assuming I understood the question correctly of course, which I might not have lmao)

elves and men are two different kinds of incarnate, with dwarves being a third. in some way, they all contain echoes of divinity, and while some are more beholden to the framework of its designs than others, everything in tolkien's writing is echoing out from divinity, carrying divinity within itself

[harmonic-melodii]

Writerly Questionnaire

Thanks, @davycoquette, It's time for me to drop some more lore about myself! My answers will most likely end up longwinded. And here's a link to the original post too for the questions if you'd like to fill them out yourself! Link

About You

When did you start writing?

I started writing around 2016, so when I was about 12 years old. I was already an avid reader and devoured every single book I came across. Back then my stories were much more fantastical, but the passion never died.

Are the genres/themes you enjoy reading different from the ones you write?

I will never write Historical Fiction despite it being one of my favorite genres to read. Books that delve into alternative history or simple romance stories that take place around historic events have always held a special place in my heart. Why will I never write in that genre? Because I'm not built for the research that goes into creating those settings.

I also enjoy the occasional romance novel, though I don't write romance-specific stories. The lightheartedness is a much-needed break from the gritty stories and concepts I write. At most I include romantic subplots in some things, but I don't like focusing on romance as a plot.

Is there an author (or just a fellow writer!) you want to emulate, or one to whom you’re often compared?

Not for my fantasy works. For sci-fi, I would like to emulate Ray Bradbury. I've always loved his books and short stories. And how he wrote about the human condition and its interactions with technology for better and worse. Though I cannot say I have written anything as profound yet.

As for poetry, I'm heavily inspired by many African-American poets like Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou. As a young black woman myself, I hold a lot of respect for similar artists in my discipline that came before me. And while my poems are inspired by my experiences and struggles with race, I believe they can bridge gaps of understanding.

Overall, I have never been compared to any authors.

Can you tell me a little about your writing space(s)? (Room, coffee shop, desk, etc.)

My writing spaces are as chaotic and fluid as me. Sometimes I will be sitting at my desk with a water bottle and typing on my computer. Other times I'll lie in bed at 2 am typing furiously into my notes app. Hell, I have a tiny spiral notebook that's a bunch of index cards with entire plots and character profiles. I write wherever and whenever I can.

What’s your most effective way to muster up some muse?

Music. I create countless playlists, some of which I'll share soon. I probably have over 70 total. Not all for my WIP or other characters that exist, but all of them are for writing in some form or another. Otherwise, I try to regularly consume new media. That is a lot harder because it takes so much energy for me to engage with new content, but when it works it works.

Did the place(s) you grew up in influence the people and places you write about?

Not necessarily. Very little of my inspiration comes from the beach town I grew up in. Rather I'm influenced by places where I've endured insane life trauma. Don't worry, there's no trauma dumping here. I want to write about those places because it allows me to visit them again safely and on my own terms.

As for people, yes a handful of my characters are inspired by people I've met. Some are not the best. But hey, it makes for decent inspiration.

Are there any recurring themes in your writing, and if so, do they surprise you at all?

I feel like I always gravitate towards writing about religion in some form or another. I was raised Christian myself and currently identify as Agonistic. I like deconstructing faith and what it means to believe in something greater than yourself. So it doesn't entirely surprise me that I circle back to religion in one way or another.

I also write a lot about family dynamics and the platonic love or lack thereof within those dynamics. And about the limits of love and what is considered "too much".

Your Characters

Me? Talking about the lesbians in my novel?? Yep!

Would you please tell me about your current favorite character? (Current WIP, past WIP, never used, etc.)

Hands down my favorite character in the cast is Aaliyah. She's the main protagonist. An optimistic college freshman, who has an intense thirst for knowledge. She was raised by her father, Ezra, all on his own. Ever since she could remember it's only been the two of them. She's funny, sweet, but very sheltered at the end of the day.

Which of your characters do you think you’d be friends with in real life?

I think I'd be decent friends with Graham. She's a guitarist in a rock band. A little rough around the edges, but I'd love to hear the music she plays.

Which of your characters would you dislike the most if you met them?

It'd probably be Ezra. He's a strict man and quite judgmental of people. If anything he'd dislike me first and I'd simply have to fire back on principle.

Tell me about the process of coming up with of one, all, or any of your characters.

In general, all of my characters start as an idea or concept. For example: Graham came to fruition because I thought it'd be funny for the man who oversees campus safety at this small college to have a rebellious daughter. Then slowly, I add more details about who she is as a person. I ask "why?" questions all of the time. Once I have a solid idea of who they are, I connect them to other characters. Sometimes relationships come before the solid idea and they help.

Do you notice any recurring themes/traits among your characters?

I write so many lgbtq+ and people of color. I genuinely don't think I have many cishet white characters. Because if they're not straight, then they're bisexual, lesbian, or asexual. I write a handful of trans people (Graham my darling beloved is trans). And I don't write a ton of white people because I enjoy writing things that represent me and my communities.

When it comes to this specific unnamed WIP the characters share themes of guilt, love, and rebellion. Which is what creates the perfect storm of the plot they find themselves in.

How do you picture them? (As real people you imagined, as models/actors who exist in real life, as imaginary artwork, as artwork you made or commissioned, anime style, etc.)

I use picrews to imagine what my characters look like. I don't draw and I prefer the blank canvas I get with avatar creators. It's very freeing.

Your Writing

What’s your reason for writing?

I write to share my thoughts and feelings. My opinions will be heard one way or another.

Is there a specific comment or type of comment you find particularly motivating coming from your readers?

Honestly, most comments are motivating enough. Just the idea that someone looked at my work and felt compelled to write something about it is enough for me.

What do you feel is your greatest strength as a writer?

Character building and writing tension. I feel both go hand in hand when you're writing scenes. The stronger the character the better potential for a tangible relationship between the two.

What have you been frequently told your greatest writing strength is by others?

Professors have complimented me on tension and character-building. I've been told I have the ability to really dig things out.

How do you feel about your own writing? (Answer in whatever way you interpret this question.)

It's fun and cool. Best hobby ever!

If you were the last person on earth and knew your writing would never be read by another human, would you still write?

Definitely. In fact, I'd probably write in obscure and weird places. Like I'd get paint and write lines of poetry on the street. Things like that. All of my writing doesn't need to be read, I just like getting it out of my head.

When you write, are you influenced by what others might enjoy reading, or do you write purely what you enjoy? If it’s a mix of the two, which holds the most influence?

As someone who has also written fanfiction, I don't care what other people enjoy. I write for myself first and foremost. Because for every single person who doesn't like my writing, I know there's at least a handful of people who love it. If I focused on what people enjoyed reading I simply wouldn't be writing my WIP novel.

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Tag list time !

@sodaliteskull @honeybewrites @cowboybrunch @writeblragenda

+ Open tag to anyone else who wants to participate!

[notalostcausejustyet]

As I’m settling into this whole academia business, I thought I’d share one of my first ever tumblr posts. Which turned out to be the basis for my first ever college essay. I’ll share the essay here after it gets graded later this week. Cheers.

On asking questions and public spaces

This is what happens when you have to take a dose of Excedrin for a migraine only a couple of hours before bedtime, because CAFFEINE. Sorry, not sorry! (Please note that for those of us who are gifted with brains of the divergent sort, caffeine only works as it ought when you need it not to lol.) So. Libraries. Libraries are magical. Always have done, even before they became a safe haven for the dispossessed members of our society (which is a brilliant bit of miracle working in its’ own right) but why? And the simplest answer is the obvious one. Books of course. Digging deeper for context here is important though. Before the internet was a thing (yes I’m plenty old enough for that) libraries were where knowledge lived. And not just the academic kind, knowledge of the world outside of what is permissible. I frame a lot of things around religious trauma. And it might seem like old hat, but it was a fundamental (pun intended) part of what shaped me into who I am now. I am 40, I am tired, I am STILL learning who I could be without the behavior patterns imposed by that upbringing. My very small town finally got a library when I was around 10. It was about a mile and a half away. Close enough to bike to, which meant I could go unsupervised. And I did. Volunteered in fact, one of the first summers they were open. Which is important. Because, yes I could check out books, but there was never any guarantees that what I checked out wouldn’t be inspected at home. Volunteering meant I could stash something in the office to read while I was there. And this is where knowledge comes in. I had read every copy of the National Geographic we had at home, the entire second hand set of outdated encyclopedia Brittanica, every bit of Christian fiction I was gifted. I read it all. But it was, for the most part, a carefully curated version of the world. Safely inside the boundaries of my fundamentalist bubble. Allowed. And then for one brief and glorious summer, I had the world at my fingertips. Any book, about anything I wished. No novel was out of bounds, no titillating synopsis had to be ignored. I could read it ALL. And I did. I read about evolution, I read about the Big Bang, the conception and gestation cycle in humanity, I read about the history of medicine and colonization, I dove headlong into fantasy and science fiction and read about queer attraction and love for the first time as something beautiful instead of seeing it painted as something unholy and wrong. I read about morality. And not the starkly envisioned morality of religion, but questions, hard choices, true acts of courage and sacrifice, shades of grey and unimaginable nuance in the world around us. I learned that I was not alone in my discomfiture when I pitted the world I was raised in against the world as it actually was. Knowledge. Direct from the tap, and I drank from it as a person dying of thirst. That summer took the tiny seed of questioning in my mind and planted it firmly in the fertile grounds of my imagination. Each new book was sunlight and rain to a rapidly growing NEED to better understand. I took many years after that one before the tree planted there grew tall enough for me to climb to the top and really see the world around me. I didn’t fully escape religion and begin the work of healing until my late 20’s. But it never would have been possible without that one summer. Without that library. Access to knowledge and storytelling is one of the most precious keystones in humanity’s development. It’s how we make sense of the world. It’s how we gain empathy and understanding outside of our own experience. It’s how we reconcile the questions we have against the world we live in. And like all things, it isn’t perfect. There exists as much capacity for deceit and evil within the pages of a book as there does in humanity itself, but without them we would be lost entirely.

[iiusia]

2, 3, 4, 13, 21, 23, and 24! I WANNA KNOW ABOUT YOUR OLIVIAVERSE YES YES

2. Summarize this au in 5 sentences.

im always so bad at this kinda stuff but i will try my best

olivia saves herself and tries to slowly relearn how to live. eli's been saving himself every day for years. mariam tries to keep them (and herself) together. they love each other so much :(. it'll work out, eventually.

3. Did anything inspire this au?

lichrally any story ive read that has slice of life/bittersweetness TBH!! but for the latest thing id say the line tender by kate allen / après céleste by maude nepveu villeneuve (french book saurry)

4. What is a major change you made?

this story used to have magical realism with birds as a thouroughline but i ended cutting that part out i felt like it was Too Much for this story yk... but i do wanna end up writing magical realism sometime soon

(that's why there's a bird in the parking lot in that snippet i posted a while back!!)

13. Write a lil snippet set in this verse.

thought id give a little uni arc olivia + lauren (for the first time? i think?)

Lauren pulls the headphones away from her ear. "Anybody you want to talk to?" Olivia, who's sitting on the small couch bolted to the side of the ship, gives a dismissive wave. "No," she says, still typing away furiously at her laptop. Lauren frowns and lowers the headphones to her neck. "Are you sure? It's been two weeks. No one that needs to know that you're not dead?" Olivia's fingers still, and she shoots Lauren a quick smile, all teeth. It's somewhat tight at the edges. "Nope," she says, shutting her laptop screen and gingerly setting it aside. "It's fine. I'm going to go get some fresh air. All that screentime is starting to make my eyes hurt." She leaves before Lauren can get a word in edgewise.

21. What makes you most excited about this fic?

i just LOVE writing these guys. you dont understand they live in my head so much that putting them down into words is a relief. like i just think that a dynamic like theirs is so fun to write... its about the deep love its about the loyalty its about the care its about the you-might-mess-up-sometimes-but-i-will-love-you-anyways DO YOU UNDERSTANDDDDDD

23. Do you have other ideas for how to continue this au/other fics that could be written in the same universe?

honestly the way im writing this now its kind of just disconnected scenes for fun yk so i could write Literally Anything... BUT for the sake of answering this question i do want to write more scenes for what i call the uni arc (olivia moves away for uni and everything she's tried to ignore blows up in her face)

24. Ramble about something you haven't gotten to talk about yet.

okay. honestly. been trying to figure it out but i lowkey want to make this story christian in some way?? idk like theres christian poetry there's christian fiction (mostly fantasy) but i havent ever read a christian story with These Vibes you know. i want to write a good story that is also christian!! is that too much to ask!!! i have no idea how .... honestly everything i think of sounds cringe and corny but maybe thats the like. social conditioning talking. fantasy stories have it easy because they can have magic and stuff so its easy to integrate but for this story thats like. the POINT is that its realistic and down to earth and they're all just People trying to get by. i cant really make it an allegory or a metaphor yk? it has to be real .... but then if i say "olivia starts to believe in her uni arc and becomes a christian" that just sounds silly to me!! (or maybe. again. its just that the worlds pov is that christianity is corny and silly and it could actually be good but IDK!!!)

[mostly-mundane-atla]

Thanks for your answer! About pre-contact vs post colonization, it's always about how writers pick and choose what aspect of the culture they'll depict to be "authentic".

I thought of when you mentioned Inuit Christianity and how prayer rituals worked its way into the culture, as well as your mention about the stilt houses of King Island. Perhaps the time periods do not fit, but I would have loved to have seen references to this in atla.

But these aspects are things writers wouldn't portray because it doesn't fit their image of "Inuit". It all plays into that romantization of "pre-contact natives" that genuinely miss accuracy of the groups they're trying to represent.

I think it could have had a place in the show, as it makes reference to both eastern and western influence regardless of different time periods. It would be a lot more familiar and accurate to current-day Inuit culture, and it doesn't have to be sacrificed for aesthetic.

Something else, but regarding teaching different cultures to children, there's lot of cited concerns about them not understanding the nuances. But honestly at that age, children are still learning their own household's culture, so little details about others are as confusing as their own. Those little details contribute to bigger understanding than what we give credit to, so there isn't anything to be afraid when portraying forgein lifestyles to kids.

Re: the show having eastern and western influences; i'm not sure people understand the extent of things that showed up in the atlaverse that had to be brought into Asia through European or American influence. Off the top of my head: custard tarts, sunflowers, corn, glasses, and the whole concept of earth, water, fire, and air as the four elements. That bit in the Kyoshi book about people eating sweet potatoes when they have no rice is a thing that happened in Japan, but the sweet potatoes themselves were introduced to Japan by the Portugese. I'm sure the list goes on.

And this may be a bit off topic but I genuinely do not care that Varrick and Zhu Li have a Christian-style wedding. We Inupiat did not have elaborate wedding ceremonies pre-Christianization and to insist that we must have had them because everyone did is incredibly ignorant and imposing of one's idea of whst makes up a "real culture" which i daresay is quite a colonialist mindset.

I also wouldn't chalk this idea of accuracy being held over and interest in factual accuracy up to romanticization, but rather fetishization. To fetishize a people is not necessarily to make a sexual fetish of them (though that can be a by-product) but to dehumanize them by treating them not as a people but as an emblem of a concept or collection of concepts. When Natives are fetishized, we're typically reduced to nature, superstisious godlessness, brutality of tribal warfare, pain, stifling traditions, mysterious languages, technological primitiveness, weird food, and quaint little stories with ancient wit. For as long as people benefit from colonizing us, we will always be so fetishized because if we weren't, people would have to question their part in the system. And that's pretty uncomfortable to think about over Thanksgiving dinner. It's bigger than Nickelodeon and Avatar but I'm also not going to celebrate the fact it took them 17 years to be peer-pressured into hiring Native actors to play characters from their stereotypically Native-coded fantasy culture.

As for those concerns, kids may not understand nuance but they do understand details and context more often than not. The most you'll ever need is an outsider audience surrogate character to ask questions and an insider friend character to answer them honestly. Kids understand that.

[utilitycaster]

I don't mind a discussion of the gods and their roles in Exandria, I do think they can be really interesting to have - especially for what it might say about a specific character. Incuriosity is one of my least favorite character traits, so asking questions is good!! But ngl some of the more recent arguments do take me out of the story, because they feel less Exandrian and more a 21st century discussion you might read on Twitter, if that makes sense?

To be honest...I'm not entirely sure which specific arguments this refers to? The discussions in the most recent episode, to give an example, still rest on the (in-universe, provable) premise the gods and the afterlife are real, whereas a modern day argument is far more likely to be about whether the gods exist in the first place. This feels much more like Enlightenment-era arguments of theology and the rise of Deism to me.

Everything that's been said that I can recall offhand fits in-universe, and I think more to the point I believe that complicated feelings about religion and the use of higher powers as a way to shift blame are a great constant of humanity (or personhood/mortality in the context of Exandria). Like, the idea of "why would the gods create a world in which there is suffering/why don't they intervene during tragedies/what have the gods done for me" is both an ancient argument and one that continues into the present day, and it is valid for Imogen to explore it; it's just that the answer of "let's kill them" the Vanguard puts forth is stupid. Deanna and FRIDA's arguments both feel very understandable to me from their perspectives. Deanna was brought back from death by her husband and by a cleric and, based on what we know of resurrection, her own will (ie, her soul was willing) - all those three people are ultimately much more culpable in this than the Dawnfather, but when she ends up finding that coming back after so long is strange and unsettling, it's easier to blame a remote and powerful entity than a random stranger, her husband, and certainly herself. FRIDA was awoken from sleep that they found peaceful in its emptiness, and finds their awakened experience to be much messier and stranger, and so yeah, they're projecting onto the gods and believe they also wish to rest. People throughout all of history have projected their own will, or anger onto ideas of a higher power, and I don't see why it would be different in a world where those higher powers are, objectively, real.

I know I tend to come down pretty hard on modern, 21st century (and usually, Christian and Westernized) understandings being projected onto fantasy settings, but I guess what I'm saying here is that these theological questions are not uniquely Christian, western, nor modern; they're fairly universal.

[collectivecartomancy]

Two Eves: The Lovers & The Devil

Poets are born to sing of love. I am a love poet. The focus of my work is Black love, in all it's complexities and subversions. I write about finding love, keeping love, hiding love, and losing love too.

When you are a poet of love, love itself tends to test you. You'll get D'Angelo love, but you'll also get SZA love, Frank Ocean love, Donny Hathaway love, Anita Baker love and my favorite, some Stephanie Mills love. (What can I say, there's just something about the comfort of a man.)

Obviously, I made a playlist for this week. Here ya go.

There's no acolyte card people are fonder of than The Lovers. Once The Lovers hits the table, most folks float away on rose scented breezes into fantasy love. The imagine their most idealized lover, their most idealized version of love.

As I've written before, however much we hate it, capitalism sculpted what love can look like in its image. So it's impossible to think of the virtues of The Lovers without finding the face of capitalism.

The face of capitalism is The Devil. Of course our Capricorn card shows us the traps of practicality and sensuality. The Lovers asks us to choose. The Devil reminds us that our choices are overdetermined.

I'm studying to become a two-headed doctor. My mentor assigned me a book I've read most of, but not well: The Bible.

I was hesitant, but game. Then I got to the second page. "God made male and female." One could be tempted to read that passage and assume that the story about the rib would not follow. Yet a few lines later, here comes the rib nonsense once more.

Tarot is a book, but it's also a library with a wide range of religious references. Most of those references, though certainly not all, relate to the Christian Bible.

The Lovers and The Devil are two examples of such blatantly Christian messages in tarot. They subvert each other's purpose. They are each other's mirrors.

While I was reading for my mentorship, and now, as I write this, I can think of nothing so much as the two eves.

The Two Eves

The truth about The Lovers and The Devil is that we are two excited about one, and not excited enough about the other.

Your heart may race at the sight of The Lovers, but are you ready to do the work of finding real love? Are you ready to do the work of maintaining relationships? Do you have the maturity to let go of a relationship that's no longer operating with dignity and trust?

These are questions that The Lovers rarely provides us time enough to ask. The Lovers, in fact, rarely asks us directly to love. It asks us to choose. Every question presented by The Lovers is a Yes or No question.

When that question does manifest as a question about love, it is often about our belief in our own lovability as it is about our choice of lover. There is always a wrong answer, and you are free to choose it. We are as likely to choose the wrong answer as avoid it under The Lovers' influence.

We see this in the Smith Rider Waite imagery of The Lovers. There's the choice between two trees. There's the two sides of the mountain which, from a distance, look the same.

But there's also the common Eve, the Eve who deceived by God. The Eve who the adversary educates (which is what many Black Christians call The Devil.)

It would be so simple to believe this divine presence knows what's best as it hovers above the card. Until you remember the story.

God tells Eve if she eats of the tree, she will die. The serpent tells her true--that she will not. She eats of the tree and she does not die. She is punished, but she does not die. What does that say about the influences at play on this card?

There are two ways to look at this, in my understanding. The first is that God is lying by omission. Eve will die, eventually but not immediately. God didn't say immediately. The second is that it was just a regular lie, told to restrain and control.

Hence another question: what reference would this Eve, so recently made, have for death? There were only two people alive. No one had ever died! Would she even understand the concept?

The Lovers

It makes sense that we'd prefer to see The Lovers as our fantasy, rather than the gamble it is. We have no idea what twists of fate may befall us.

These are the stakes of The Lovers. This is why we so often find The Lovers and The Devil together.

Let's go back to the first, and more apocryphal Eve, since she is the Eve of The Devil. This Eve was made at the same time as Adam.

The presence of the Eve on The Devil is proof that there is a wrong answer to the The Lovers that still feels right. It shows us that even in the absence of forever, in the presence of our worst tendencies, there can still be pleasure.

It also presents the possibility for love that isn't predetermined or divinely assigned. It reminds us the worst thing about tarot reading generally, about our free will.

We have the power to choose a lover who cherishes us for all that we are. We have the power to choose a lover who indulges in our vices with us. Either could be the lover we need at the moment. One can look like other in the night of a bedroom. One can look like the other in the morning sun.

The Devil

The Devil reminds us that we are responsible for our choices. It's important that it comes up after The Lovers and not before. It's a result.

These are both acolyte cards, subject to the whims and will of others. Yet we can be tempted to perceive one as free and one as hopelessly lost.

I won't romanticize The Devil. After all, it's a card of tricks, deceit, lies, even addiction and abuse. But it's also a card of the body, of our flesh. It allows us to know better even if we do better.

It's the Tommy Gnosis line "Eve just wanted to know shit." And she did, which is exactly how we find her in her predicament. Her story is pulled by the strings of a patriarchal God intent on controlling us all, through our desire to know the truth.

So what should one make of what the serpent revealed to her? Did he reveal a lie, and thus, her chains. Or did he lie to her, thus distracting her from God?

What you believe about the story can influence what you believe about these cards. Where do you find free association? Where do you find unfair restraint?

Within that question is the potential of love itself. It can hurt us. It can lead us down the path to our worst self. It can swell our hearts. It can make it easier to love ourselves. It can, surprisingly, do all these things at once.

When we understand that love is overdetermined we see how we've been misled by the powerful. We can see how our idea of loved is shaped around what's marketable, what our oppressors prefer. When we understand that love is a choice we make, we may find away to love better, love more.

The Lovers and The Devil are fraternal twins. They tell one whole story about love. To understand one well is to understand them both. To dive all the way to the bottom of either archetype is to commit to the whole of love.

Further Thoughts

Capitalism, Scarcity, and Tarot Love Readings

Five of Cups, Five of Swords: Two Sides of Shame

The Aphrodites: The Lovers & The Devil

Understanding Tarot’s Acolyte Cards

The Ace of Hearts:: The Light

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Read more of the Queer Tarot Blog 

[magical-glimpse]

Hello I have a question regarding generational trauma.

I’d talk about black/african/afro history. For decades black people were put in slavery by arabians, themselves (but that was the case for every peoples to enslave those they caught in a battle) and white people. The reasons for each are a bit different but the global idea is that african that were caught were sold to arabians and white people. That was the trade, they give slaves to receive arms or whatever else. Before the enslaving of black by white people, african people could only be free if they converted to Islam otherwise they’d stay slaves. Their spirituality, appearance, culture etc… were demonized by everyone. Muslims and christians (and even other nations today who still considere black/african history as poor, animalistic which is fake or at least very incomplete if we see that in an western/asian pov… they were very close to Nature and their environnement… just by looking at their spirituality and how they took/take care of their hair and more !). Then, after (and even while) the white esclavagism on african people (now afro-descents) I see how much art/music/nature was and is a big part of african/afro-descent identity. If they survived to esclavagism it’s because they had faith in music, in their own spiritual abilities sith their voice, their body, their hair, their mind. It’s not some scientific stuff like white people did but they manage to create their own power with the african spiritualty transformed into Art mixed with Nature/what’s natural. (I don’t know iff you get what I mean).

However my question is, why do black/afro/african people had to go through that and still suffer from it generations after generations ? Did an african ancestor put a cursed or did something not good for us to go through those things ? To be frank I don’t think you nor me would have the real answer but I would love to know your idea(s) on it, because for me we are very connected to Nature in all its forms but we are also the most hated kind of human being for absolutly no reason at all…

I mean, I think there's a lot of oversimplification here. In Northern Africa, black and arabian people (i define arabian here as a arab speaking population, of mixed, meditaranean or middle eastern ethnicity) have been mixing for a while. Both Christianity and Muslims had black followers even without colonization and forced conversion. Ethiopia for example, has some of the oldest churches and christian traditions in the world, and were one of the first few christian population, as in like, Roman Empire old christian people. Before christianity, the majority of the population was jewish or pagan. Africa is huge, it's a whole continent, and so many religions and traditional beliefs remained outside AND despite of christianity and islam. Also, Islam and Christianity are not necessarily detached from nature, and Black cultures are not necessarily unscientific... I think you have some misinformation and some deconstruction to work through yourself... What you are projecting onto the entirety of black people is also what people are projecting onto american indigenous people or past european witches. You are creating this idea that it was evil monotheistic falsely rational religions of the colonizers vs nnocent people who were connected to nature and pure because they did not have monotheism nor science. And i am not saying this was not colonization motivated in parts by religious beliefs, because it was, but this belief is also reducing the population to this Rousseau-like idea of the innocence of the savage man, which is also a tool for oppression. This is the idea that is driving thousands of white or privileged people to do humanitarian travels to fulfill their white savior fantasy without actually understanding what the culture or people is outside of the fact it's exotic and different and "more natural". It's also what drives cultural appropriation in new age spaces, because people are craving meaning so bad they would rather look at practices they don't understand that are put on a pedestal on the standard of "purity from religion/society" but voided of their actual cultural context. Science is not a white people thing. Science was valued and built differently in different cultures yes, but Islam valued knowledge so much muslim countries and cultures were the home of so many significant achievements in history. Before and outside of Islam, black people and cultures cultivated science. Did you know that Africa has the oldest technological record because it has the oldest tool found archeologically ?The oldest findings of chemistry being understood as a science is also found in Southern Africa. Stones were discovered with writing suggesting a strong mathematical skills applied to astronomy. In fact, calendars from Zimbabwe were found to be even more accurate than Mayan ones.

To answer your last question, there is no reason why this massacre happened. It would be spiritual bypassing to simply say that one person cursed the entire continent to suffer for a thousand years... Colonization happened because people in power would benefit from new lands and people to work it that did not need to be paid. They fell upon lands they didnt know, and their greed paired with their religious exceptionalism led them to massacre the new people they came across. If i may suggest two texts to think about I recommend :

-the chapter 19 of Candid written by Voltaire. Candid is a philosophical tale written by a French author who criticizes the society of his time, including slavery. Specifically, this chapter has the main characters meet a dying slave, who talks about his life and how he was turned into a slave by his parents selling them to the Dutch, and how "it is the price of you eating sugar in Europe". Slavery was about money, and about the higher classes showing off lands, conquests and food as a luxury afforded by the exploitation, suffering and genocide of black people. -The controversy of Valladolid which is a historical event that was later transcribed into different books and movies. This is the very first debate in Europe about how while colonizers wanted to define humanity and whether or not indigenous people were human or not. In the book version I read, it was particularly interesting as the ending was about how colonizers would use the land, and how the final decision was that indigenous people were human, but not as much as white people, however, black people were not "human enough" but could be free labor for sugar and cacao.

[writingwithcolor]

what are some things I shld be careful of when writing jewish-coded magical characters? One of them is a romani jewish necromancer and the other is a russian jewish ice-magic witch. Their universes dont have western christianity, only judaism, islam & eastern orthodox christianity. Magic is normal and widespread and considered part of nature. Are there any stereotypes i shld be aware of avoiding when writing them? especially since the necromancer is meant to be morally grey (but def not evil)?

Witches: Romani Jewish Necromancer, Russian Jewish ice-magic witch

From a Romani perspective, a necromancer would be problematic as most Romani people have very strict traditions and superstitions regarding death and the dead. A Romani person with any ties to their culture would never be a necromancer; additionally, making them morally grey is a bit concerning to me as this is dangerously close to stereotypical. 

-Mod Tess

One thing you will need to decide is if your ice mage’s powers come from secular magic or from, like, prayers. I chose to go with secular magic in my fantasy series because the most important magical character is sometimes morally gray while the totally nonmagical protagonist (Queen Shulamit) is fairly moral and devout. But there is also Jewish folklore where magic is being used by a rabbi to do holy things, so that’s really a writing decision on your part. Since you also have a morally gray character doing magic, you may want to go the same route I did.

There is probably Talmud and stuff about necromancy (it’s probably forbidden but I am not familiar myself and I’m hoping one of the other Jewish mods will know. The ice mage will be easier to handle as far as representation. I’d say with Jewish witches avoid any connection with the Western image of the witch with the exaggeratedly hooked nose, avoid the idea that kids (especially gentile kids) are an ingredient in her portions, and avoid magic that somehow invokes pop Christianity/demonology aesthetically. 

Here’s an older post of mine about writing Jewish witches: Jewish Witch Characters

-- Shira

I agree that the ice mage is the easier answer: the only other example I can think of of Jewish representation in fantasy with regard to ice magic is Naomi Novik’s Spinning Silver, which is a masterpiece of positive Eastern-European Jewish fantasy representation and also doesn’t on its own constitute a representational trend. 

As far as the other character, I’m not sufficiently educated on Romani culture to understand how and in what ways it would mix with Jewish culture for any individual, and it looks like Tess is advising against that aspect of their background, so let’s just talk about necromancy and Jewishness. 

As is often the case when discussing practices we now consider to be magic, attitudes toward necromancy in Jewish writings are all over the map. 

Torah forbids it outright. Talmud restricts that prohibition to certain methods and situations. Medieval writers have opinions on methodology, while historical folk practice has a variety of practical suggestions. Welcome to the history of the Jews. 

Necromancy in the sources I was able to find for this answer seems to refer to questioning the dead, a form of fortune-telling or advice-seeking. I didn’t find any mentions of animating the dead for tasks other than conversation. If your Jewish necromancer has other uses for corpses, you’re going to have to extrapolate. 

In Torah, the prohibitions on consulting spirits and mediums come as part of longer lists, alongside cultural-identity laws like observing shabbat, banned religious practices such as human sacrifice and self-harm, and societal norms such as deference to elders and fairness to immigrants. Scripture clearly has no doubt that necromancy works, however, since it makes much of King Saul’s hypocrisy when he consults a medium after making the practice illegal and driving its practitioners out of his borders or into secrecy: the ghost himself has harsh words for the king and offers no comfort. 

The Talmud mentions a variety of examples of people consulting the dead, whether invoking a spiritual apparition or reanimating a corpse to consult with. In medieval writings, there’s an argument that being called to the living world is a hardship for the dead, and that the reason for the prohibition is out of compassion. Medieval literature also offers gleanings such as that the deceased can only be interrogated within the first year, after which the soul is no longer within reach, and that the dead observe shabbat and therefore cannot be invoked between Friday evening and Saturday night. This last one raises the fascinating question of what time zone is it in the World to Come, but that’s a Talmud-style question for another day. Interestingly, the Talmud does specify that humans don’t have jurisdiction to punish necromancers: that offense is between the individual and God.

The upshot of all this seems to be that your morally-gray Jewish necromancer is transgressing a Jewish law by practicing their skills, but that the transgression is not more severe than more mundane transgressions such as eating pork or shellfish, except in that it is unpleasant for the deceased. 

In a Jewish context, the word for the soul or animating spirit of a human is the same as the word for breath. If your character’s necromancy doesn’t restore the deceased’s consciousness, maybe all of the above is irrelevant, and the sin they’re guilty of instead is desecration of a corpse; since the character is intentionally dark, having them wonder which category of sin they are committing would be a valid dialogue choice. 

As always, I would warn you against having your Jewish character commit murder themselves, especially of a child, consume blood in any context, or act with a motivation of xenophobia or greed for wealth or power. A morally-gray Jewish character with a complex relationship to their Jewishness can have the potential to be interesting, but not if they reinforce existing negative portrayals. 

I hope this small-scale tour of Jewish writing and thought on the subject has helped you imagine how your Jewish characters might approach the relationship between their abilities and their backgrounds, and that you had fun following me on this journey. Good luck!

-Meir

Hi, Meir did a lot of external research with sources for this one so I’m gonna toss his Ko-fi link in, in case anyone feels like tipping him for this since we’re all unpaid volunteers. 

https://ko-fi.com/meirmakesstuff

-- Shira

[meirmakesstuff]

1/2 Hi Meir! I saw your answer on WWC, and since you mentioned you're professionals, I figured I'd ask directly: I'm writing a second world fantasy with a jewish coded people. I want to be clear in the coding but avoid the "if there's no egypt, how can there be passover?" so I called them Canaanites. I thought I was being clever by hinting in the naming that the whole region does exist, but I've since read that it might've been a slur in fact? Do you have any advice on this?

2/2 I did consider calling the group in question Jewish, but aside from how deeply Judaism is connected to the history of the Israelites, I haven't used any present-day real-world names for any other group, (I did use some historic names like Nubia). I feel like calling only one group of people by their currently used name would be othering rather than inclusive? Or am I overthinking this?

Okay so I want to start out with some disclaimers, first that although WWC recently reblogged an addition of mine to one of their posts, I am not affiliated with @writingwithcolor​, and second that the nature of trying to answer a question like this is “two Jews, three opinions,” so what I have to say about this is my own opinion(s) only. Last disclaimer: this is a hard question to address, so this answer is going to be long. Buckle up.

First, I would say that you’re right to not label the group in question “Jewish” (I’ll get to the exception eventually), and you’re also right in realizing that you should not call them “Canaanites.” In Jewish scripture, Canaanites are the people we fought against, not ourselves, so that wouldn’t feel like representation but like assigning our identity to someone else, which is a particular kind of historical violence Jews continue to experience today. I’ll get back to the specific question of naming in a moment, but because this is my blog and not WWC, and you asked me to speak to this as an educator, we’re going to take a detour into Jewish history and literary structure before we get back to the question you actually asked.

To my mind there are three main ways to have Jews in second-world fantasy and they are:

People who practice in ways similar to modern real-world Jews, despite having developed in a different universe,

People who practice in ways similar to ancient Hebrews, because the things that changed us to modern Jewish practice didn’t occur, and

People who practice in a way that shows how your world would influence the development of a people who started out practicing like ancient Hebrews and have developed according to the world they’re in. 

The first one is what we see in @shiraglassman​‘s Mangoverse series: there is no Egypt yet her characters hold a seder; the country coded Persian seems to bear no relation to their observance of Purim, and there is no indication of exile or diaspora in the fact that Jews exist in multiple countries and cultures, and speak multiple languages including Yiddish, a language that developed through a mixture of Hebrew and German. Her characters’ observance lines up approximately with contemporary Reform Jewish expectations, without the indication of there ever having been a different practice to branch off from. She ignores the entire question of how Jews in her universe became what they are, and her books are lyrical and sweet and allow us to imagine the confidence that could belong to a Jewish people who weren’t always afraid.

Shira is able to pull this off, frankly, because her books are not lore-heavy. I say this without disrespect--Shira often refers to them as “fluffy”--but because the deeper you get into the background of your world and its development, the trickier this is going to be to justify, unless you’re just going to just parallel every historical development in Jewish History, including exile and diaspora across the various nations of your world, including occasional near-equal treatment and frequent persecution, infused with a longing for a homeland lost, or a homeland recently re-established in the absolutely most disappointing of ways.

Without that loss of homeland or a Mangoverse-style handwaving, we have the second and third options. In the second option, you could show your Jewish-coded culture having never been exiled from its homeland, living divided into tribes each with their own territory, still practicing animal, grain, and oil sacrifice at a single central Temple at the center of their nation, overseen by a tribe that lacks territory of their own and being supported by the sacrifices offered by the populace.

If you’re going to do that, research it very carefully. A lot of information about this period is drawn from scriptural and post-scriptural sources or from archaeological record, but there’s also a lot of Christian nonsense out there assigning weird meanings and motivations to it, because the Christian Bible takes place during this period and they chose to cast our practices from this time as evil and corrupt in order to magnify the goodness of their main character. In any portrayal of a Jewish-coded people it’s important to avoid making them corrupt, greedy, bigoted, bloodthirsty, or stubbornly unwilling to see some kind of greater or kinder truth about the world, but especially if you go with this version. 

The last option, my favorite but possibly the hardest to do, is to imagine how the people in the second option would develop given the influences of the world they’re in. Do you know why Chanukah is referred to as a “minor” holiday? The major holidays are the ones for which the Torah specifies that we “do not work:” Rosh Hashannah, Yom Kippur, and the pilgrimage holidays of Sukkot, Passover, and Shavuot. Chanukah developed as a holiday because the central temple, the one we made those pilgrimages to, was desecrated by the invading Assyrian Greeks and we drove them out and were able to re-establish the temple. That time. Eventually, the Temple was razed and we were scattered across the Roman Empire, developing the distinct Jewish cultures we see today. The Greeks and Romans aren’t a semi-mythologized ancient people, the way the Canaanites have been (though there’s increasing amounts of archaeology shedding light on what they actually might have been like), we have historical records about them, from them. The majority of modern Jewish practice developed from the ruins of our ancient practices later than the first century CE. In the timeline of Jewish identity, that’s modern.

The rabbinic period and the Temple period overlap somewhat, but we’re not getting into a full-scale history lesson here. Suffice it to say that it was following the loss of the sacrificial system at the central Temple that Judaism coalesced an identity around verbal prayer services offered at the times of day when we would previously have offered sacrifices, led each community by its own learned individual who became known as a rabbi. We continued to develop in relationship with the rest of the world, making steps toward gender equality in the 1970s and LGBT equality in the 2000s, shifting the meaning of holidays like Tu Bishvat to address climate change, debating rulings on whether one may drive a car on Shabbat for the sake of being with one’s community, and then pivoting to holding prayer services daily via Zoom.

The history of the Jews is the history of the world.  Our iconic Kol Nidrei prayer, the centerpiece of the holiest day of the year, that reduces us to tears every year at its first words, was composed in response to the Spanish Inquisition. The two commentators who inform our understanding of scripture--the ones we couldn’t discuss Torah without referencing even if we tried--wrote in the 11th and 12th centuries in France and Spain/Egypt. Jewish theology and practice schismed into Orthodox and Reform (and later many others) because that’s the kind of discussion people were into in the 19th century. Sephardim light Chanukah candles in an outdoor lamp while Ashkenazim light Chanukah candles in an indoor candelabrum because Sephardim developed their traditions in the Middle East and North Africa and the Ashkenazim developed our traditions in freezing Europe. There are works currently becoming codified into liturgy whose writers died in 2000 and 2011. 

So what are the historical events that would change how your Jewish-coded culture practices, if they don’t involve loss of homeland and cultural unity? What major events have affected your world? If there was an exile that precipitated an abandonment of the sacrificial system, was there a return to their land, or are they still scattered? Priority one for us historically has been maintaining our identity and priority two maintaining our practices, so what have they had to shift or create in order to keep being a distinct group? Is there a major worldwide event in your world? If so, how did this people cope?

If you do go this route, be careful not to fall into tropes of modern or historical antisemitism: don’t have your culture adopt a worldview that has their deity split into mlutiple identities (especially not three). Don’t have an oppressive government that doesn’t represent its people rise up to oppress outsiders within its borders (this is not the first time this has occurred in reality, but because the outside world reacts differently to this political phenomenon when it’s us than when it’s anyone else, it’s a portrayal that makes real-life Jews more vulnerable). And don’t portray the people as having developed into a dark and mysterious cult of ugly, law-citing men and beautiful tearstreaked women, but it doesn’t sound as if you were planning to go there.

So with all that said, it’s time to get back to the question of names. All the above information builds to this: how you name this culture depends on how you’ve handled their practice and identity. 

Part of why Shira Glassman’s handwaving of the question of how modern Jewish practice ended up in Perach works is that she never gives a name to the religion of her characters. Instead, she names the regions they come from. Perach, in particular, the country where most of the action takes place, translates to “Flower.” In this case, her Jewish-coded characters who come from Perach are Perachis, and characters from other places who are also Jewish are described as “they worship as Perachis do despite their different language” or something along those lines (forgive me, Shira, for half-remembering).

So that’s method one: find an attribute of your country that you’d like to highlight, translate it into actual Hebrew, and use that as your name.

Method two is the opposite: find a name that’s been used to identify our people or places (we’ve had a bunch), find out what it means or might mean in English, and then jiggle that around until it sounds right for your setting. You could end up with the nation of the Godfighters, or Children of Praise, The Wanderers (if they’re not localized in a homeland), The Passed-Over, Those From Across The River, or perhaps the people of the City of Peace.

Last, and possibly easiest, pick a physical attribute of their territory and just call them that in English. Are they from a mountainous region? Now they’re the Mountain People. Does their land have a big magical crater in the middle? Craterfolk. Ethereal floating forests of twinkling lights? It’s your world.

The second option is the only one that uses the name to overtly establish Jewish coding. The first option is something Jews might pick up on, especially if they speak Hebrew, but non-Jews would miss. The third avoids the question and puts the weight of conveying that you’re trying to code them as Jewish on their habits and actions.

There’s one other option that can work in certain types of second-world fantasy, and that’s a world that has developed from real-world individuals who went through some kind of portal. That seems to me the only situation in which using a real-world name like Jews, Hebrews, or Israelites would make sense. Jim Butcher does this with the Romans in the Codex Alera series, and Katharine Kerr does it with Celts in the Deverry cycle. That kind of thing has to be baked into the world-building, though, so it probably doesn’t help with this particular situation. 

This is a roundabout route to what I imagine you were hoping would be an easier answer. The tension you identified about how to incorporate Jewishness into a world that doesn’t have the same history is real, and was the topic of a discussion I recently held with a high school age group around issues of Jewish representation in the media they consume and hope to create. Good luck in your work of adding to the discussion.

[poppykru]

I have a genuine question about grishaverse because something has been bothering me and that niggling feeling is frustrating. I’ve gotten the impression from past posts of yours that you’re Slavic, I am too (Russian, but raised in the US), and I just...it feels like Bardugo used our culture for aesthetics. And this bothers me. It feels like she’s exoticized it and because it’s not a negative presentation versus the typical villain role, it’s fine. But it stills feeds into these holdover stereotypes of Slavs as other. But I want to get over it! Because SO many people I follow are getting into it. And because if it weren’t for this factor, it would be right up my alley. Plus, I liked SOC well enough when I read it. How do you ignore those elements and just enjoy it? (I swear this isn’t judgmental, I’m just dealing with a lot of FOMO 😕.)

Hi! Yes, I am Slavic! Glad to have another one of us here ^^

Your concerns are very valid. I had the same ones, I always do when we get representation in American media. The way Slavic people have been portrayed as dumb thugs, villains, and just as barbaric, has been a frustration of mine since forever. (And also the fact that to Hollywood Slavic means Russian - no offence to you!)

I’m gonna be honest and say that I don’t know if she did that. My understanding of cultural appropriation is very limited. Adding to that, she took her inspiration mostly from Russia, and since I’m not Russian (my country was part of the block but not the union), I can’t really make a fair judgement, yk.

From my perspective, it seems that Leigh did make an effort to research the culture. I can see in her writing that she respects the culture and wants to show it in a positive light. Since the whole story of the first 3 books (shadow and bone, siege and storm, ruin and rising) take place in Ravka, which is the equivalent of Russia, you can’t really portray everyone as a barbaric villain. And she didn’t. I can’t even think of characters that followed that stereotype. I don’t see the drunkard stereotype either. I mean characters indulge in ‘kvas’ but never more than i’ve seen in other stories, yk. The characters are not limited to their typical national traits, but are in fact very diverse and colourful. I don’t get the feeling of being portrayed as ‘other’ since the POV is Alina’s who is Ravkan. I dont get that sense in SoC with Nina either.

I liked the integration of Orthodox Christianity with its many saints and relics and rituals. Though at times it did really feel like a foreigner writing about it, rather than a believer (or an ex believer raised in the religion lol).

Ok, i take it back, there is one character that would fit the stereotype, but I’m not sure he was Ravkan. I think he was Shu (equivalent of China)?

One thing that annoyed me is that Leigh didn’t get the names right. It’s something Americans never do right when they write Slavic people. It should be Alina Starkova, not Starkov, which is the male version of the surname. Zoya Nazyalenskaya, not Nazyalensky.

As whole, I was happy with book. Maybe because we so rarely get any books set entirely in Slavic countries where the culture is not actively mocked, or the POV is not of a foreigner that comes to bring us civilisation or any of that other BS. I hope this paves the way for more writers to do that (properly) and maybe explore other Slavic cultures - we are all so rich in history and mythology (i mean you’ve seen the Witcher...).

Also i was just happy i can finally read and understand the ‘fantasy’ names correctly lol.

I hope this answers your question. Sorry, I’m not the most eloquent. If you have other questions, my ask box (and dms) are open!

[justhewayfaringstranger]

So, I've wanted to address this topic for a while and this post I read this morning while having breakfast is a sort of response from the universe.

I would say to start by explaining a simple concept.

Demons and spirits are not the same thing, but rather, they vary from each other. Likewise, spirits and ghosts are not the same.

• Creatures understood as "demons" exist in all religions; they are supernatural beings, typically associated with the evil, historically prevalent in religions, occultism, literature, fiction, mythology and folklore;

• "spirits" are instead organized energy with at least a certain level of sensitivity that has an energy body and in most cases also an astral body. The Latin word is a translation of the Greek prneuma ("breath", "air", "vital breath") and to some extent it can be seen in the apeiron of the Presocratic Anaximander, who had to some extent dematerialized the archè (Greek: ἀρχή ) of the other Ionian naturalists, the original principle of the universe and of every part of it, impalpable and invisible but still material, as shown by another void that, blowing inside it, fills with air matter. With the Stoics, the term begins to be compared to today's one of spirit. The pneuma belongs to the god who gives life to things and guides them according to his wishes. The pneuma is a force that manifests itself not only in the individual man but is present in all things as the "soul of the world". They are ancient entities like the world itself, part of the primordial chaos and consequently neutral in themselves;

• the term “ghost” refers instead to any incorporeal entity. The term ghost comes from the Greek φάντασμα phàntasma, which in turn derives from φαντάζω (phantàzo, "to show"; from the root φαν-, which expresses the idea of ​​"appearing" and "showing"), and had the meaning of apparition (understood as a supernatural manifestation) and only with time has its meaning been restricted to indicating the apparition of a deceased.

In 1800, with the birth of the practice of spiritism in France, it ended up rendering in the common imagination "spirits" and "ghosts" similar entities, if not true synonyms.

The French pedagogue Allan Kardec after observing a series of phenomena, formulated the hypothesis that such phenomena could only be attributed to incorporeal intelligences (spirits). Spiritual communications took place "thanks to the intervention of a medium", that is a person with particular skills who acted as mediator between spirits and living beings, during the so-called séance. This became a busines for many and most of the spiritualists were actually charlatans who swore to the victims that they could talk to the dead. In most cases, those who could afford to turn to a medium, were economically wealthy and of high rank lost and therefore for the scammer it was certainly not difficult to obtain information (even intimate) about the deceased and those around him, if at this was added some well-orchestrated play of smoke and lights, here is the "grandmother's ghost".

Having understood this, one wonders what it is then what we understand as a "ghost of a person". It is a trace left by the living. On a scientific level, death doesn't exist. From the chemical-physical point of view we are isolated systems that receive energy and produce it. But the universe itself is a closed system. So our energy is the energy of the universe. We are universe. What happens when we die? Our energy returns to the universe system. But as we know, energy is neither created nor destroyed, but it changes. So our energy is energy that has been changed in the past by others, and will be changed by others when we are gone. Death doesn't exist because energy is immortal. The energy that I am using now to tap on my laptop keyboard is the same energy that Gaius Julius Caesar used to pull the reins of his horse and to cross the Rhine. And it will be the energy that in the future a scientist will use to to be able to travel between the various space-time dimensions. Death doesn't exist, and the life of one is the life of all.

To simplify then, what we mean as the ghost of Marilyn Monroe for example, is nothing more than a sort of energetic gif of Marilyn Monroe.

I'll give you another example. Anne Boleyn died by beheading, therefore by a violent and unjust death. In this situation, she is likely to have felt strong emotions and released a huge and consistent huge amount of energy as a result. Let's say that Henry VIII was present at the execution along with a bunch of other people, let's also say that he went back to that place (or others where Anne felt strong emotions and therefore released large amounts of energy) and thought about her, let's say that Elizabeth I also thought of her mother and so many other people. All these emotions have turned into energy. If we saw energy as a palette of colors, it would be as if: the more consistent the emotions, the more intense the color, therefore, the more energy we send (even unconsciously) to the energetic image of Anne Boleyn (the energetic gif), the clearer this will be where most of the energy is concentrated (eg the Tower of London, a room in the building, etc.).

So when we go to a "haunted" place, what we see is not the "person", but a kind of still image. And according to the speech above, it is therefore normal to find this type of freeze frame in places such as castles, hospitals, etc. then if these are found on natural energy centers or lines… bingo!

Speaking instead of spirits, as mentioned before, there are no good or bad spirits. Good and bad as well as light and dark, like day and night, are a contrast present in many traditions, including native ones. This duality can also be referred to the human being and represent a moment of acting or thinking of a person. You can think and act towards the light or towards the darkness and this can also happen to shamans.

Just think of the ego and when it takes over, or when you try to manipulate, at that moment you are not in the light. But it can happen and that doesn't mean being good or bad. Acting, in fact, can also be connected with a person's karma and precisely follow what is required by this spiritual law.

Light and darkness, as in the human world, are also reflected in the world of spirits and even in this case they do not absolutely determine the condition of goodness or badness. Spirits, who in the light can be protectors, guides or allies, can also move in the dark dimension.

And if we think like the natives that everything has a spirit and that it can move between light and darkness, we can understand how there can be spirits that are particularly powerful and able to move very strong energies such as to create an effect in ordinary reality.

It is important to know the distinction between light and shadow because, from an early age, we were educated to separate the good from the bad, the right from the wrong, but for this we have become very sensitive when it comes to going to work on our shadows. As I told you, light and shadow are states of being that we all have within us. Working with shadows doesn't mean black magic, witchcraft or whatever. Simply observe the aspects of light and be able to deal with those of shadow as well. Light and darkness are two sides of the same coin that it is important to integrate.

Being half Latin, therefore leaning towards a culture extremely linked to its roots and above all to the relationship with mental spirits, it isn't difficult for me to understand this concept, and therefore despite being a Christian, I have no problem in defining myself as a witch. Of course, coming to this awareness wasn't easy, as I am partly European and therefore I grew up in a society in a Western society that is scared of what it cannot control. After years of researching my origins, my culture and theological studies, I have come to find my balance.

Returning, however, to the main reason for this post, having made the necessary explanations (and given the tools for a critical analysis of the matter), here are the points on which I personally disagree and why:

Reading books about witchcraft: Knowledge for educational purposes is by no means negative, quite the opposite. The question is whether the aforementioned "about witchcraft" book is a "spell book" or some sort of "sacred book". For example, if I find the Necronomicon tomorrow and start reading it without knowing what it is, it is likely that I will find myself living the remake of The Conjuring in the real life.

Casting most types of spells, including hexes: Same speech made in the previous point. One of the first rules of witchcraft is "know your practice". You must be aware that what you are doing is not a game and every action has consequences, even if you don't believe in the rule of 3 (everything you do comes back to you 3 times). In the specific case of curse and hexes spells, they are the most treacherous and dangerous, because you are working with dark and malevolent energies. This type of practice in particular is a double-edged weapon, which is why many witches advise against them and propose alternative methods if possible.

Practicing divination: It isn't always negative, but in some types of divination the help and guidance of spirits and divinities is sought. For example, I often do bibliomancy with the bible and even if I first ask for God's guidance, in front of each answer I ask for confirmation, because the devil was the most beautiful angel in heaven and just as darkness does not allow us to see. where we go, even a dazzling light can deceive us.

Playing with Ouija or other talking boards: Ouija is not a game and it is an extremely dangerous tool, precisely because what you do is contact spirits and entities and you cannot know who will answer the other side. Nothing good anyway.

Putting up fantasy or non-Christian artwork: Have you ever seen Annabel? Here, the principle is the same. Be careful what you bring into your home, as home is a sacred space, and nothing can enter without you giving it permission. So if you not only invite it, but rather you bring it inside and give it a space, don't come and complain to me if it is difficult to send it away.

Celebrating pagan holidays: If it's a holiday of a closed religion, avoid ruining your life. Holidays basically consist of performing rituals that often involve spirits. Learn about the history of that holiday you want to celebrate, the symbols, the rituals, and why it is celebrated in that particular way.

Celebrating Halloween: The same as the previous point, except that we all (or almost all) know that samahin is the day when the space where the veil falls and the two worlds come into contact.

Watching scary movies and TV shows: I'm not saying that if you watch The Exorcist you will be possessed, but I can't assure you otherwise either. I took The Exorcist as an example because it is known that a real ritual is performed in the movie and a lot of "disturbing" things have happened on the set of the film and to the actors. When you watch a movie, even if it is fictional, if for example it performs an evocation or a ritual you are not only witnessing, you are participating in all respects. Be careful, every person is different.

Reading (horror novels, fantasy books, comics and graphic novels). Playing (tabletop RPGs, LARP games, video games): Same as the previous point.

Listening to heavy metal music, dancing: It goes for any kind of music actually. Do you know how many pop songs I use as a spell?

Dyeing your hair: I'm not saying you'll invoke a demon, but for many cultures cutting your hair makes you more vulnerable to spiritual attack and color is an essential aspect of witchcraft.

Swearing: Wishing someone who has crossed your path death is considered a curse in all respects. Even if done unconsciously.

Drinking: Drinking, smoking… shamans have used alcohol and drugs for centuries to connect with in the spiritual world.

Having tattoos and piercings: As long as you don't tattoo Aramaic words that you don't know the meaning of, everything is fine. Before getting a tattoo in a symbol you saw in a temple in Mexico, find out the meaning of it. I'll give you an example: my cousin once bought a T-shirt with the words "puta madre" (mother whore). He had bought it only because he liked it, without knowing the meaning of the word.

Now, most of these points are mainly related to intention. As I said before, I often use music in my spells, but if for example, I use "can't be touch by Roy jones" for a protection and encouragement spell (eg a manifestation) and a few months later I listen to the same song on the radio doesn't mean it will work like a spell again. In many cases it is a question of intention. Yhat's why it is important to educate yourself.

[sinagrace]

Iceman’s been back on my mind lately. It started with the internet rumor that Shia Labeouf was being considered to play the role of Bobby Drake in a Marvel Cinematic Universe version of the X-Men. My DMs and @Mentions on social media were a mixture of intense reaction and then asking my take on who would make a great Bobby Drake (for the record: in my head I always saw him as a younger Antoni Porowski with a theater background, ‘cuz playing the funny guy with a vulnerable streak requires serious acting shops). My mind went back to the time of BC, when I was doing a lot of touring, and answering this very question because of my work on the Iceman book at Marvel. One thing led to another, and I decided to take a trip further down memory lane to look at my favorite volume of the series: Amazing Friends. Now, I know I’ve spent equal amounts of time publicly stating what a gift working on Iceman was, while also calling out the challenges that came with the experience, but the third volume really was a pure blessing. I was able to take every valuable lesson I learned as a writer, and apply it to telling a story that would be interesting to one person: Me. I’ve been a lifelong X-Men fan, I live and breathe comics, so my own expectations for a return to the series seemed like the only ones to really worry about meeting/ surpassing. The first two volumes had been so bogged down by rotating editors, complex continuity, company-wide events, multiple artists… The third volume was my chance to focus on what an Iceman series was outside of so much context. All that mattered was challenging myself to do an X-Men story that focused on the aspects of the franchise I felt were valuable and relevant, meaning: excuses to have Emma Frost be an asshole and finding an opportunity to make fun of Kitty Pryde’s haircut. Before moving on from Marvel, Axel Alonso made time to call me for a pep talk about the series. I wanted to get the series extended, and he wanted to help me succeed with the ten issues he could commit to. First, he offered an eleventh issue to give me more time on the stands. He took a look at everything I had planned, and basically told me to restructure with an eye for ramping up the pace. My writing background comes from prose and essays/ think pieces… both of which are methodical and provide some allowance from the reader to really take your time and set up the world before diving into the meat. That’s not the case with comics. You gotta work fast. Especially in today’s market, there is less and less room for a retailer to say, “give it two volumes, because shit starts really coming together by the third trade.” That was literally my speech for hooking people on such iconic series as Invincible, Fables, and Strangers in Paradise. Nowadays, every single issue is not a brick to be laid down as foundation so much as a bullet in your gun. Conflicting imagery, but that’s the point. Axel told me to think about the Big Moments in my life and sort out how to inject the mutant metaphor into it and make the most compelling comic book story I could. This was epic advice that I took with me into the new arc, but I struggled a bit with what could be bigger than the “coming out” storyline in volume one. Love was off the table because I wanted to keep Bobby single and ready to mingle. Death was off the table too, because my editor felt like we’d done enough with Bobby’s parents in the first two volumes. Upon looking at my own life, and considering the stuff me and my friends were dealing with, I landed on something a bit more reflective than LIFE or DEATH. I wanted to focus on that moment when a gay guy looks outside of himself and realizes the folks around him may not have it so easy. After everything we’ve been dealing with this summer, Iceman’s “big issue” of the arc feels oddly prescient. Bobby Drake had to reconcile his accidental complicit role in keeping the Morlocks down, and he has to investigate new approaches to being a better ally to those who don’t want to or can’t live under the protection of the X-Men. I used the Morlocks to allegorically speak to the issues that the trans/ NB community face today. Considering that trans folks are facing higher rates of homelessness and murder than other members of the LGBTQIA+ community, all I needed to do was find a perfect villain to treat the Morlocks as “lesser-than.” Cue Mister Sinister, who I wrote as particularly Darwinist with a major flair for interactive theater. While Amazing Friends definitely is the most fun I’ve had working on the book, it was also full of the heaviest shit I’ve written about. I’m so grateful that my editor let me use Emma Frost for a story about the trauma of gay conversion therapy with her brother Christian, but I’m still annoyed he wouldn’t let me put her in a sickening Givenchy outfit for her reveal. Similarly, creating the Madin character required that I chat with several mental healthcare professionals and members of the NB community to respectfully portray them as a resilient and fleshed out hero. I included personal lessons that I learned from years of the therapy (the sandcastle / sea image, a Jay Edidin fave moment). My editor and I weren’t always aligned, but we definitely were on each other’s side. He understood what I was trying to do and asked questions when something flew over his head, and he even had the good instincts to stop me from going too heavy handed with the ending. My original idea for the arc’s finale was to have Bobby become permanently scarred in his fight with Sinister, where he’d have a cool ice gash running across his face or something, a la Squall from Final Fantasy 8. The goal was to show Iceman stripping himself of his ability to pass as non-mutant to save the Morlocks, but the Mutant Pride fight scene being a stand-in for the Stonewall Riots kind of already made enough of a statement. Plus, no one in editorial wanted to deal with remembering to track his scar in other books. At first I tried to balk at his point of view, but when I looked over my original notes for the series, the point was to focus on optimism and hope. Giving Bobby a permanent scar and emphasizing the notion of sacrifice was too bleak a message for a series wherein the hero carbo-loads hoagies while riding an ice scooter and mutant drag queens emcee local festivals. Of course, the crowning achievement of the series… my mutant drag queen :) I’ve witnessed a lot when it comes to the world of pop culture and myth-making, and I 100% believe that you can’t plan the success of something. I’ve seen bands forced into breaking up because labels spend six figures failing at making listeners connect with an album. I witnessed firsthand how The Walking Dead was built from relatively humble beginnings as a buzzy cable drama into a literal international phenomenon over the course of its first three seasons. Everyone hopes for the best, but you never know how something will land with audiences. When the Shade character took off, I was truly astounded. Things I posted on Instagram while half-asleep became official quotes on major news sites. Queens and cosplayers were interpreting her like Margot Robbie had unveiled a new Harley Quinn lewk. The impact was so legit and immediate that we had to jump in and give Shade a proper Marvel hero alias, to truly welcome her into the X-Men canon. Hence the name change to Darkveil. (Funny story: I tried to fight hard for Madame X as an alias, but CB didn’t want another Agent X / “X-Name” character. Three months later, Madonna announced the Madame X album. Phew!) There was a time where I felt uncertain that the folks in charge at Marvel would bring Darkveil into any stories outside of the ones I wrote. My understanding was that Hickman was like the Cylons and had A Plan-- one that didn’t include her character. I made peace with my contribution to the Marvel Universe being contained, but then someone on social media pointed out that Darkveil showed up in an issue of Marvel Voices. After breaking down and reading Hickman’s House of X, I saw that his Plan was one of endless possibilities, and that he was moving EVERY character into new and dynamic places. I have hope now that he sees the possibilities with Darkveil, and takes advantage of her and all of her many body pouches. Amazing Friends really is my favorite thing I’ve done for the Big Two. I made a lifelong friend out of artist Nate Stockman (DC, please hire us for a Plasticman book), and I got to run a victory lap with the most encouraging and supportive readers out there. It was worth every dreadful conversation, every shitty thing a person said to me online, and all of the fun nonsense that goes into being creative for a living. Being stuck at home in quarantine has given me a lot of time to reflect on the gift that my career to date has been, and I feel so grateful to be where I am today. Other people may groan when they have to talk about something they’ve moved on from, but not me. I made people happier, I got to work with my favorite characters at Marvel, and and I'll say it again: it’s a frickin’ gift to make people move from your work. So, I will engage every tweet or message asking me my thoughts about who should play Bobby Drake in the Marvel Cinematic Universe… I’ll just never have a good answer.

[notalostcausejustyet]

On asking questions and public spaces

This is what happens when you have to take a dose of Excedrin for a migraine only a couple of hours before bedtime, because CAFFEINE. Sorry, not sorry! (Please note that for those of us who are gifted with brains of the divergent sort, caffeine only works as it ought when you need it not to lol.) So. Libraries. Libraries are magical. Always have done, even before they became a safe haven for the dispossessed members of our society (which is a brilliant bit of miracle working in its’ own right) but why? And the simplest answer is the obvious one. Books of course. Digging deeper for context here is important though. Before the internet was a thing (yes I’m plenty old enough for that) libraries were where knowledge lived. And not just the academic kind, knowledge of the world outside of what is permissible. I frame a lot of things around religious trauma. And it might seem like old hat, but it was a fundamental (pun intended) part of what shaped me into who I am now. I am 40, I am tired, I am STILL learning who I could be without the behavior patterns imposed by that upbringing. My very small town finally got a library when I was around 10. It was about a mile and a half away. Close enough to bike to, which meant I could go unsupervised. And I did. Volunteered in fact, one of the first summers they were open. Which is important. Because, yes I could check out books, but there was never any guarantees that what I checked out wouldn’t be inspected at home. Volunteering meant I could stash something in the office to read while I was there. And this is where knowledge comes in. I had read every copy of the National Geographic we had at home, the entire second hand set of outdated encyclopedia Brittanica, every bit of Christian fiction I was gifted. I read it all. But it was, for the most part, a carefully curated version of the world. Safely inside the boundaries of my fundamentalist bubble. Allowed. And then for one brief and glorious summer, I had the world at my fingertips. Any book, about anything I wished. No novel was out of bounds, no titillating synopsis had to be ignored. I could read it ALL. And I did. I read about evolution, I read about the Big Bang, the conception and gestation cycle in humanity, I read about the history of medicine and colonization, I dove headlong into fantasy and science fiction and read about queer attraction and love for the first time as something beautiful instead of seeing it painted as something unholy and wrong. I read about morality. And not the starkly envisioned morality of religion, but questions, hard choices, true acts of courage and sacrifice, shades of grey and unimaginable nuance in the world around us. I learned that I was not alone in my discomfiture when I pitted the world I was raised in against the world as it actually was. Knowledge. Direct from the tap, and I drank from it as a person dying of thirst. That summer took the tiny seed of questioning in my mind and planted it firmly in the fertile grounds of my imagination. Each new book was sunlight and rain to a rapidly growing NEED to better understand. I took many years after that one before the tree planted there grew tall enough for me to climb to the top and really see the world around me. I didn’t fully escape religion and begin the work of healing until my late 20’s. But it never would have been possible without that one summer. Without that library. Access to knowledge and storytelling is one of the most precious keystones in humanity’s development. It’s how we make sense of the world. It’s how we gain empathy and understanding outside of our own experience. It’s how we reconcile the questions we have against the world we live in. And like all things, it isn’t perfect. There exists as much capacity for deceit and evil within the pages of a book as there does in humanity itself, but without them we would be lost entirely.

[sirtravisjacksonoftexas]

What if Dragons Were Real: Part Two

Recently, I wrote an article titled “What if Dragons Were Real?”. In it, I tried to show not only how dragons (specifically both the limbless and flying, fire breathing varieties) could have arisen naturally, but also how their existence would impact human history. Although I covered many topics and several kinds of dragon, I did not make room to discuss both the Asian dragon, and our own flesh and blood Komodo Dragon, preferring to mention them in a later article.

Now, that article has come.

Let us further indulge in speculation and alternate history, as well as modern zoology, as we continue to answer the question: what if dragons were real?

 1. DRAGONS OF THE FAR EAST

Before we can speculate on how Asian dragons could have arisen, we need to better understand what Asian dragons are.

One of the best ways to do so is to contrast them with the more familiar dragons of the West.

Dragons in both Europe and Christian Russia were viewed as formidable critters. They were potent dangers to both livelihoods and lives. Sometimes they were depicted as being pacified with young maidens, the villagers rather having one of their own eaten rather than the entire village being both incinerated and eaten. These dragons were arch rivals of both knights and saints, creatures who turned their slayers into timeless heroes. Indeed, they were sometimes used symbolically to refer to the Devil.

In the Orient, however, dragons were not simply giant, flying monsters. Despite also being formidable when roused, dragons were seen as good, not evil.

Indeed…some were worshipped as gods.

It isn’t hard to see why; Asian dragons were not only very wise, they were capable of impressive magical feats, such as shape shifting and invisibility. They could, depending on the type of dragon, control weather, streams, or serve as protectors of the god’s homes. Daoism taught that dragons were good spirits, though their image was warped a little with influence from Hindu mythology. Chinese dragons, the most famous of Asian dragons, came in a variety of species. However, all Chinese dragons, no matter the species, were thought to undergo the same growth stages:

1. Female dragon lays a richly colored egg.

2. 1000 years later: baby hatches, looks like a snake.

3. 500 years later: head slowly becomes like that of a fish.

4. 1000 years later: Dragon grows long tail, beard, fish scales, four limbs, claws, ears, and a long face.

4. 500 years later: dragon grows horns

5. Yet another 1000 years later: wings.

And you thought puberty was hard.

Its odd for most westerners to think of Chinese dragons as having wings, due to being more familiar with the adolescent, wingless form. Yet Chinese dragons were indeed thought to eventually attain wings, though they could fly without them, thanks to either magic pearls or a swelling on their foreheads, which is sometimes labeled “bladder-like”.

Repeat: bladder-like.

Now, if you had read my previous article, you’ll recall that I mentioned how in the documentary “Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real”, hydrogen bladders were invoked as a possible explanation for how dragons could fly, despite not having wings big enough for their enormous bodies. It is an amazing idea, and yet…the ancient Chinese had come up with a quite similar one ages ago. We only need hydrogen and we’re all set. Course, to be fair, a single hydrogen bladder, unless it was of truly ginormous size (perhaps much larger than the rest of the dragon), would not enable a wingless dragon to even float, let alone fly. Nevertheless, people were coming up with a similar answer to dragon flight long before dragon documentaries were made.

Japanese dragons are quite similar to Chinese dragons, with some also considered divine. However, some could be pure monsters who were nevertheless formidable enough to challenge a god. Yamato-no-Orochi, the 8-headed Dragon of Koshi, was one such dragon, a being so formidable that Susa-no-wo (aka Susano-Wo), the Japanese Storm god, resorted to use trickery instead of brute force in order to kill it. 

Others could even be slain by mortals, yet still had intelligence and formidable capabilities. Indeed, Japanese dragons were a bit more snake-like than those of China, and one, the winged hai riyo, had feathers.

The differences among Asian dragons are at times startling, yet collectively they have many things in common, such as vast god-like powers, wingless flight, for the most part a good temperament, and generally having a very serpentine shape. Taken together, we can see just how different Asian or Oriental dragons are compared to those of Europe. Indeed, some have gone to far as to state that Chinese dragons in particular should not even be called dragons at all.

And yet…Asian dragons have more in common with European dragons than you might think.

1. Serpentine shape? Both most Asian dragons, and some European dragons (especially the worm variety) have serpentine aspects. Indeed, the European Worm dragon is basically a giant snake with bad breath.

2. Treasure? While stories of dragons hoarding buried treasure are well noted in Greek myth, Norse mythology and Beowulf, the ancient Chinese believed in the fu-ts’ ang lung, a type of dragon that kept great treasures in the Earth. Also, male Chinese dragons were known to each keep a pearl.

3. Gods? Remember all those stories about maidens being offered to dragons in western folklore, such as in the story of St. George and the Dragon? Notice the word again; offering. Sounds a lot like people are making human sacrifices…to gods. Indeed, Veles, a Slavic god, was said to be able to appear in the form of a dragon.

Nevertheless, their differences are so great that we need to go down a different route than we did in my previous article on dragons. Its one thing to figure out how wyverns and worms came about.

Its another to figure out how Asian dragons could have arisen.

How would they have evolved?

Could they have evolved?

And what would real Asian dragons look like?

Read on…

 2. HERE BE FOSSILS

In a previous article on the Serpent of Eden, I mentioned a prehistoric snake named Najash rionegrina. If you went back in time, say 95 million years ago, and went on a nature hike, chances are you might run into this ancient serpent. At first, you might think that it was a typical run of the mill snake.

That is, until you spotted its legs.

Unlike any snake today, Najash rionegrina had legs and even hips! It was not unique; there were several prehistoric snakes that sported legs as well. Over time, however, these legs and hips vanished, courtesy of evolution. Nevertheless, the question has to be asked; why did they have legs in the first place?

Answer: because snakes evolved from lizards.

Over time, the ancestors of snakes lost their forelimbs, their bodies changing from generation to generation until…the first snake hatched.

But what if the ancestors of snakes took two avenues?

What if some continued to evolve a serpentine shape…yet retained their forelimbs?

Perhaps such a creature could have evolved into an Asian dragon.

We could also invoke another species of group of lizards that evolve serpentine shapes separately from those that evolved into snakes, courtesy of convergent evolution. Perhaps these could have retained their limbs, and thus given rise to Asian dragons.

However…there is a problem.

Hair.

Repeat: HAIR!

Asian dragons have hair!

They MUSTACHES and BEARDS, for crying out loud!

Surely, reptiles could never evolve into Asian dragons, because…once again…HAIR!

And no reptile has hair…right?

Wrong!

Geckos have super tiny toe hairs, which they use to stick to hard surfaces. Without these tiny hairs, they’d have no ability to climb or hang from horizontal surfaces. If Geckos could evolve hairs, why couldn’t dragons?

We could also postulate that dragons evolved from Stem-mammals, aka protomammals, aka mammal-like reptiles, aka paramammals, aka synapsids (didn’t think to add that last one in the previous dragon article when I first posted it on Tumblr. Its on there now), creatures that had both reptilian and mammalian traits. 

Such creatures are not only thought by scientists to be the ancestors of mammals, but one of them, Thrinaxodon, seems to have had whiskers. Perhaps we could imagine a protomammal (that name sounds the coolest so I’m going with it) Asian dragon, perhaps even one that survived to the modern era, a living fossil.

However, its one thing to postulate an ancestor, another to postulate that such animals could evolve into bonafide Asian dragons.

But would they have been able to?

In my previous article on dragons, I noted that fire breathing dragons could have achieved flight by having both wings and hydrogen bladders. The former would most likely evolve by means of having their arms or forelimbs turn over many generations into wings, the same process that gave both birds and bats their wings. Its not totally impossible that a mutation could arise that would allow for the existence of a regular 6-limbed dragon, but a 4 limbed wyvern variety would be more biologically sound. Thus, if Asian dragons were real, and had wings…then they would have had to have evolved them from forelimbs or arms ages ago. If they had the growth stages noted in Chinese folklore (more on them later), then we would have to postulate that the arms of any individual dragon would have to turn into wings as they aged (more on this later too), but let’s focus for now on a hypothetical species of, for all intents and purposes, wyvern Asian dragon. Such a creature could only fly if it had both wings and hydrogen bladders. Course, we could also imagine an Asian dragon that glided like a modern “flying dragon” lizard (as depicted in “Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real”), or an Asian dragon that makes its lower body concave and glides like a modern flying snake, or even perhaps one that uses a combination of skin flaps, body alteration and hydrogen bladders. However, for true flight, we would have to surmise a wing and hydrogen bladder combo in order for an Asian dragon to take flight (keep in mind, Chinese dragons attain wings only in their adult form).

However, there is one potential problem.

What would happen if such a dragon tried to fly…with its wings being located at the far front of its body, instead of closer to its middle?

Keep in mind, the length from its wings to the tip of its tail is FAR greater than the length from its wings to the tip of its snout. Indeed, not only is it far greater than the wing to tail length that is usually seen in depictions of European dragons, but their legs are also further back on their bodies than those of European dragons as well. Flying European dragons also have less serpentine, less wiggly midsections. 

I’m no expert in aerodynamics, but it seems to be that such excess length and weight behind the wings, along with a less stable, more wiggly midsection, could potentially cause issues with flight. Having hydrogen bladders almost throughout the length of the animal could help like it would with a European dragon, but…it would be far better if the animal simply had two pairs of wings instead of one, with a second pair on its lower body.

But of course, that’s just silly. After all, there has never been a four-winged vertebrate, right?

Wrong!  

Microraptor, a tiny dinosaur that lived in the early cretaceous, was highly bird like, sporting both feathers and wings. Indeed, if they had survived to the modern era, you might mistake them at first glance for a bird (I know, I know, scientists now distinguish between avian dinosaurs (i.e. birds) from non-avian dinosaurs (regular dinosaurs), but I’m old fashioned; I’m calling the former birds). Though not a true flier, Microraptor was a natural glider. Compared to most dinosaurs, it was highly unusual.

Even more so when you count its wings.

Um, all four of them.

Its hind legs actually evolved into a second pair of wings. Microraptor could still use its wings to climb trees and the like, but they were also used for gliding.

Oh, and by the way: Microraptor was not alone.

Indeed, there was an entire group of four winged dinosaurs called microraptorines.

True, these dinosaurs didn’t fly, but its not hard to imagine these animals evolving true flight if their kind had lived longer, or of they had not gone extinct.

If this trait evolved once…couldn’t it evolve again?

Couldn’t convergent evolution produce another species, indeed another group of animals, that likewise bore four wings? Couldn’t they have lived longer, perhaps eventually evolving true flight?

Both are very possible.

But what about the unusual growth stages?

To my knowledge, the only kind of Asian dragon that had a series of strange, long growth stages is the Chinese dragon, so we could forgo such growth stages and simply imagine a dragon that didn’t experience having them.

But what if they did?

Could such growth stages be realistic?

Well, some animals do experience unusual growth stages before they develop into adults, indeed far more so than we see in many species (including ours). Most frogs start out as tadpoles, which lose their tails and gain limbs (as well as different skin colorations) with age. Butterflies start out life as caterpillars. Giant Panda newborns look FAR different from that of an adult, being pink and having little hair. Baby crown of thorns starfish look about a similar to an adult crown of thorns starfish as you do to a blue whale. The growth stages of a jellyfish can likewise involve a lot of serious shape shifting. Given this, we can’t conclude that a real Asian dragon wouldn’t likewise undergo the unusual series of growth stages as indicated in Chinese folklore. We…might have to tweak things so that such creatures would hatch with wings (instead of being limbless like a snake) that would eventually grow powerful enough for flight, but then again, tadpoles don’t have limbs, yet as they grow into a frog, they do develop them.

Now, some may counter, saying that in one of its growth stages, a dragon gains both the head and the scales of a fish. Surely, a reptile can’t grow a fish’s head and scales, right?

Well, that’s what I was getting to.

You see, at first, the Chinese dragon (and other Asian dragons that share its physical characteristics) seems, at first glance, to be an impossible hybrid, on par with Pegasus and centaurs. Indeed, it is a combination of 8 animals and 1 supernatural being:

1. “Horns” (actually Deer antlers, but I guess “horns” sounded better).

2. Snake’s neck.

3. Feet: partially tiger’s feet.

4. Head of a camel.

5. Eagle talons instead of true claws.

6. Carp’s scales

7. Cow ears (unlike those of other cows, the ears of a dragon don’t work; it actually needs its horns to hear).

8. Clam belly

9. Demon eyes.

Well, it seems like we should ditch the idea of a real Asian dragon, right? I mean, being a hybrid of 8 animals and a demon? Surely no such creature could exist, right?

Ladies and gentlemen, its time to think 4rth dimensionally.

Although hybrids like that mentioned above do not occur in nature, there are animals in the wild that, at first glance, look like a hybrid monster of world myth. Consider the Duck billed platypus; it has both the feet and bill of a duck (hence the name), a beaver’s tail and an otter’s body. It looks like a hybrid of the three…and yet isn’t. This false hybrid nature is further reinforced by the fact that it lays eggs, but even then, it’s not a mammal-bird hybrid. 

The Okapi of Africa looks like a strange antelope whose legs were replaced by a mad scientist with those of a zebra, yet its neither antelope or Zebra. Indeed, its closest relative is the Giraffe. 

Given all of this, we could imagine a reptile evolving that could likewise be a false hybrid. Instead of having a camel’s head, it would have a head somewhat similar in shape to that of a camel. Instead of having deer antlers, it could sport horns or horns that bear some semblance to antlers (as I pointed out in my previous article on dragons, horned serpents exist). Instead of having fish scales, its scales could be simply fish like. Instead of having eagle talons, it might instead have claws that somewhat resemble eagle talons. We might forgo some hybrid aspects (tiger-like feet, demon eyes (more on them later), etc.), but a dragon that looks like a hybrid of several animals…and yet is not…is not entirely impossible.

But what about demon eyes?

When it gets dark, some animal’s eyes glow. This is a reflection of light caused by a part of the eye called a tapetum lucidum. This reflective surface is found in many a critter. Humans, sadly, don’t have one, and thus we miss out on all that glowing eye fun. However, the glowing effect is not merely for show; an eye with a tapetum lucidum can see more efficiently in darkness.

Could you imagine a dragon having such eyes? A multi-ton, serpentine dragon having a glowing stare? Sounds like something out of the Twilight Zone.

Couldn’t this lead to people describing a dragon’s eyes as…demonic? Quite possibly. 

But what about long life? Surely, no living creature can live for thousands of years, right?

Once again…WRONG!

Large sponges are thought by scientists to have a lifespan stretching up to over 23 centuries.

Over 2300…years.

Likewise, though Red Sea Urchins can generally reach a century, some could potentially reach more than twice that age…without having the nasty effects of old age.

Then there are immortal jellyfish, creatures that have the ability to reverse the aging process, to the point where they become a polyp (just a step above larvae). After this is done, they can start the normal aging process again, eventually returning to adulthood. It’s not impossible that such a creature could potentially live forever.

Given this, we cannot state that nature couldn’t have done the same trick in reptiles.

But what about intelligence?

As stated in my previous article on dragons, its not impossible for reptiles or even dinosaurs to have evolved human level intelligence.

Thus, we seem to have everything covered.

That is…save for magic.

How could an animal make itself invisible, or both shrink to a tiny form and grow so large that they reach the top of the sky? How could they control and manipulate the weather??? Surely, these are capabilities that no animal could ever hope to evolve…right?

Actually…yes, this is true.

However, this doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t develop these abilities by other means…

  3. THE DRAGON IN THE HAT TRICK

In my previous article titled “What if Fairies Were Real”, I did my best to keep it as scientific as possible in determining how such creatures could have both arisen and gained their paranormal powers. Trying to do so without invoking magic was an amazing intellectual exercise, and it led to a very interesting conclusion when it comes to fairy magic.

You see, if fairies were real, and we didn’t invoke the supernatural to explain their miraculous powers, then the only way they could have such powers without calling upon the supernatural…was if their “magic” was actually super science.

Let’s imagine, for sake of argument, that I told a tribe in the Amazon, one not familiar with modern science, about J Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb.

 Let’s say that I told them that he created a weapon that could not only engulf miles and miles of jungle in flame in a split second, that not only could it cause an ungodly windstorm, that not only would it make a giant mushroom-shaped cloud…but that it would also poison air, soil and water. Imagine if I told them that this weapon could vaporize people, leaving behind a permanent imprint of their shadows. Let’s say that I told them that his weapon brought down a mighty tribe in the far East, and that he went on to say “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

What would this tribe think J Robert Oppenheimer was?

They might think he was a god, some other kind of supernatural being, or a freakishly powerful sorcerer.

Indeed, if such a tribe had somehow bore witness to Oppenheimer testing this bomb (with safety goggles of course, so that they wouldn’t go blind), saw it go off…they might start worshipping him.

That’s the power of technology. If its advanced enough, it can appear to a more technologically primitive people like magic. Indeed, there are people in Africa that think that cameras can take a person’s soul (a belief based on the images that appear on photos). Some Tibetans likewise don’t like the idea of being photographed, preferring to keep their souls in their own bodies. Cameras are nothing more than tools used to take photographs, no sorcery involved, yet to some cultures in the world that are not familiar with the science…they are magic.

Thus, if fairies existed, and had the unusual abilities attributed to them in folklore…then the only (non-supernatural) way they could pull off said abilities is through advanced technology.

Could it not be the same for the Asian dragon?

At first, it seems impossible: after all, they’d just have four sets of wings, right? No hands, let alone opposable thumbs, and thus no way to make technology, right?

Um…not so fast.

Remember, we went through several scenarios for how Asian dragons could evolve, not all of which involve them being true fliers. They could have either had skin flaps like a flying dragon, or made their lower bodies concave in order to glide like a flying snake. Indeed, they could have done both, perhaps also with hydrogen bladders. This would free their upper limbs from becoming full fledged wings. Combined with an opposable thumb and advanced intelligence (augmented by a several millennia lifespan), Asian dragons would have the ability to make technology, even highly advanced technology. In another scenario, where dragons went through growth stages similar to those mentioned in Chinese mythology, but with the arms and legs eventually becoming wings, they would have arms for several thousand years. If they had opposable thumbs during that time, then they would be able to both make and use tools for many centuries before their arms turned into wings.

Thus, dragons could potentially make advanced technology.

But would their technology surpass our own?

As I mentioned in my fairy article, technological advancement wasn’t at the same level for every species of ancient human. For example, Homo sapiens had a faster rate of technological advancement than both homo erectus and homo egaster. Indeed, when one considers the speed of human technological development, one can see that it has significantly increased in pace. Just think: The last known surviving veteran of the American civil war (Albert Henry Woolson, 1850-1956), saw the arrival of telephones, radio, television and nuclear weapons. This is a guy who fought during a time when most warships were still made of wood and people were using telegraphs. He had lived during the same time period as the Old West, the age of Jesse James and the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.  

And what happened 13 years after Woolson died?

We landed on the moon.

Given all of this, we could therefore imagine a species of Asian dragon that had an even higher rate of technological advancement than even humans have had. This could have partially occurred either due to having a more advanced brain, or perhaps due to experiencing an ever-increasing rate of technological progress earlier than humans did (Imagine what would have happened if Neanderthals had undergone a similar growing rate of technological advancement long before we did? Imagine how history would have been if Neanderthals tested the first airplane…while we were starting to build pyramids?). We could also imagine Asian dragons, as a species, predating our species, perhaps considerably so, and thus having more time to technologically advance. A head start in the technological race could have given Asian dragons the means to develop super science long before humans invented the wheel.    

However, there is something else that could potentially fuel this technological advancement.

Long life.

As I mentioned previously, Chinese dragons are said to take 3000 years just to grow from a newly hatched snake into a full-fledged adult dragon. Let’s imagine that all Asian dragons had took this long to grow into adulthood. Let’s imagine that they could live even longer than this (remember, it takes them 3000 years to reach adulthood. It’s not their entire lifespan).

How would this affect both science and technology?

Consider some of the brightest minds in human history: Isaac Newton, Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Socrates, Copernicus, Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, etc. There are many titans of learning that have lived throughout human history, altering our world in a variety of ways with their inventions and discoveries.

But what do they all have in common?

Among other things, they didn’t live for thousands of years.

Instead, they only lived for decades. Not millennia, not centuries.

Decades.

But what if such great geniuses could live for thousands of years? What if they aged slowly, keeping the Grim Reaper away for countless ages?

What could they have discovered?

What could they have invented?

Imagine if Isaac Newton was still alive, conversing with modern physicists. What else could he have discovered besides the Law of Gravity? What amazing experience he could bring to scientific experiments! What if Nikola Tesla was still alive today? If he was, would we have warp drive, transporter technology and androids indistinguishable from Katy Perry (come on scientists, make it happen!) by now?

Now imagine what they could do, what they could discover…if they lived for thousands and thousands of years?  

This, along with perhaps a more advanced brain (or beginning to speed up their technological advancement long before humans did the same), could lead to Asian dragons developing a far superior technology than humans, so much so that they could pull off feats that humans would mistake as magical. Perhaps they could even develop highly advanced technology while we were still in the cave. Perhaps they could use holographic technology to fool people into thinking that they were shrinking or growing, or have tech that could bend light, making them invisible, or even technology that would be capable of controlling weather. Perhaps they could develop technology that could enable them to truly fly without wings (which might lead some humans to embellish tales about them, to the point where they were said to have wings). Perhaps they could have technology so impressive that they could alter their genetic codes, enabling them to grow wings, without having to lose their arms and paws (and thus their opposable thumbs) in the process. If they had this level of technological sophistication at any point in human history…most people would consider them magical. Only recently would some propose a more science-based answer to their impressive paranormal feats.

And how would people in the ancient or prehistoric world think when encountering these “magical” dragons? How would they view such colossal creatures that seemed to have unearthly, occult powers?

Most would probably view them as gods.

And how were some Asian dragons viewed?

As gods…

Indeed, this would be even MORE likely than it would be with the existence of real fire breathing dragons, and the chances of people worshipping the latter as gods would have been HIGH. Also, a dragon cult involving Asian dragons would be FAR more long lasting than one for fire breathing dragons would be; as mentioned in the previous article, fire breathing dragons would most likely have wings instead of arms, and thus would not have technology. Humans would eventually overtake their physical prowess by means of technological advancement. However, as noted above, Asian dragons wouldn’t have this problem. Human technological advancement wouldn’t be able to overcome far superior dragon technology (we’re talking potentially space age, Star Trek level technology), let alone superior tech whose progress was growing faster and faster. You may have had some humans question these dragon “gods” and perhaps have some that tried to rebel against them, but without divine intervention (no pun intended), Asian dragons would always squash them like bugs, using superior size, strength…and technology.

We could, however, also imagine dragons foregoing wanting people to worship them and simply just invade human held lands, which they would be able to win with ease. Human empires in real history didn’t want those they conquered to worship them as gods; they wanted tribute. Even empires that venerated their emperors or kings as gods didn’t want their entire population to be viewed as divine. They did, however, assert their authority, often brutally. We could perhaps see humanity doomed to a near endless perpetual yoke, serving their dragon emperors, void of hope. Such hope might be rekindled, however, if dragon nations and culture began to change, to the point where dragons began giving some human lands back (just as has occurred in our history, with the decline of European empires in the 20th century). Indeed, dragons might even want humans assimilated into their culture, just as Americans tried to assimilate Native American tribes into their culture.

We could, however, also consider the possibility of dragons exterminating humans. No doubt countless people groups would be wiped out during dragon imperial campaigns, but an actual genocide of all humanity would also be possible.

Either way…dragons would be the dominant life form on the planet.

Its interesting to try and figure out what life would be like if dragons were real, but one needs to remember that, in a sense, we actually DO live in a world where “dragons” exist. Indeed, you can see such dragons now and again on documentaries, and possibly even at your nearest Zoo…

3. THE KING OF KOMODO

Komodo dragons are…frightening. I mean, I-just-messed-in-my-pants level of frightening. Its easy to understand why, considering that they are lizards…that average 155 pounds and 6 and a half to over 9 feet long. Indeed, they can reach up to 300 pounds and ten feet in length. Combined with both being able to hit 11 mph and having a venomous bite (yes, you read that correctly; Komodo dragons actually have venom glands in their mouths!), these creatures can be the stuff of nightmares.  

At one time, they were also the stuff of myth and legend.

Tales of titanic lizards stalking the forests of Komodo piqued the interest of some in the industrialized world. Most would have thought that such tales were…just that, tales. Indeed, they might have considered these lizards as fictional as ogres, unicorns and centaurs.

And yet…in 1912…the skeptics had to eat crow.

The monster was revealed to be real.

But why is it called a dragon?

Because the original tales told of a monster that somewhat resembled a dragon.

Its easy to see why; like the European dragons of lore, Komodo dragons are huge, reptilian and have forked tongues. True, they don’t have wings or fiery breath, but then again, in world myth and legend, dragons come in many forms, some of which are lizard like. Indeed, some depictions of St George fighting his dragon in art make the dragon look like an oversized lizard. Also, most dragons in myth and legend are not depicted as breathing fire. Indeed, some have lethal bad breath instead. Now, Komodo dragons don’t have lethal breath, but being a carnivore and having no desire to buy toothpaste and a toothbrush at their local pharmacy…I’m guessing that their breathe is pretty ripe. However, considering that they have a poisonous bite, one could see how this, combined with their bad breath, could eventually lead to the creation of a mythic dragon with lethal bad breath. Over time, embellishment could potentially lead to even fire breathing. One could imagine even a flying firebreather, or perhaps even a winged reptilian god, being developed due to spreading rumors of Komodo dragons combined with embellishment.

But were Komodo Dragons the originators of both European and Asian dragons?

Um…not likely, considering the distance between Komodo Island and places like Asia and Europe.

However, it is, for all intents and purposes, a true dragon, the only one we have.

However, there was once another, a creature that made a Komodo Dragon…look like a Komodo Gecko.

 4. THE GIANT RIPPER

In ice age Australia, there once lived a dragon. A giant monitor with attitude, this dragon ruled the Outback with an iron claw. The first Australian Aborigines lived in fear of this terror, a creature that proved hard to kill, a monster impervious to boomerangs and shaman curses.

I’m talking, of course, about Megalania. This animal was quite similar to a Komodo Dragon…but at 26-30 feet long and weighing over 2 tons, it was much larger, capable of taking down rhino-sized prey. If it still lived in Australia today, it would be a terror to both humans and livestock. Indeed, if it had survived to the modern era, explorers might very well have labeled it the “Australian Dragon”.

And what dragon would be complete…without legend?

Curiously enough, though Megalania is long extinct, the creature lived on in Australian Aboriginal folklore, where it is called “Mugoon-galli”. It was said that the Mugoon-galli used its tail to bring about sandstorms.

Does this latter power make you think of Asian dragons? Specifically Chinese dragons?

It should, considering that Chinese dragons likewise could bring rain by flicking their tails.

Now, this doesn’t mean that Megalania was the source of the Chinese dragon. It does, however, reveal an even more dragonesque aspect of Megalania, a power that bridges prehistory with legend.

For all intents and purposes, Australia was once home to “dragons”. The Land Down Under is now their graveyard, a land whose dragons have faded into dust and fossils.

Or have they?

Its curious to know that, for over a hundred years, even into modern times, a colossal lizard has been sighted in Australia…

Perhaps, there is still a dragon lurking on the Earth today, abiding in a deep cave, waiting for humans to foolishly wander into its lair…

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