#its such a core aspect of her character and that being reflected in everything

[winged-bat]

thinking about that one study on how people are less likely to help when they’re other people around bc they assume someone else will take action/responsibility and how the opposite applies to Cass, who no matter whose around will shoulder the burden of responsibility as she thinks herself the only one capable of helping/solving the problem

[posletsvet]

A Somewhat Messy Exploration of the Concepts of Purity and Impurity in Satosugu, and perhaps some more

The yin and yang symbolism in Satosugu (here I'm using 'Satosugu' as a short way to refer to the relationship between these characters, not necessarily a ship dynamic) has been brought up and discussed a lot in fan analyses lately, and by those who have mental capacity to express it far better than I ever could. However, there is one more thing I would like to talk about in relation to Suguru Geto and Satoru Gojo's dichotomy, and perhaps some more.

As much influence as Chinese philosophical concepts (such as already mentioned yin-yang) have on Japanese cosmology, religious views of the people of Japan are actually an intricate and complex amalgamation of various teachings and beliefs, with Shinto being numerically the most prominent faith of the country. I was curious as to how the ideas found in Shinto could be applied to Gojo and Geto's relationship, and I guess I've stumbled upon some inkling of a thought in this regard -- so please bear with me while I rant.

Before this gets too long, I'm putting my rambling below the cut.

To begin with and give a little bit of context, the core teaching of Shinto is to have profound respect and reverence for nature. As a polytheistic and animistic religion, Shinto is defined by its belief in the kami, who are stated to inhabit all things, including objects of the surrounding landscape and various natural forces. Due to such elemental qualities of the faith, purification takes place as one of its central aspects and a widely followed practice, as well. There is a great emphasis laid on spiritual and physical purity and cleanliness. That being so, the moral categories of good and evil (or virtue and sin), so important in the western worldview, give way to a different outlook on things: the world is perceived in terms of 'clean' and 'dirty' rather than 'good' and 'bad'.

This concept finds a reflection in Gege's writing primarily through Tsumiki as someone who's essentially an embodiment of the virtue of being innocent and pure at heart. When she's brought up in the narrative, the image is frequently accompanied by flowers -- and more often than not, especially when it comes to Megumi's perspective, those flowers are white lilies. And those are one of the most common and prominent symbols of purity. When Tsumiki's innocence is symbolically destroyed with Yorozu taking over her body, white blossoms are depicted as thrashed and stained in the background. Her purity is further defiled by her death as everything related to death and decay is considered foul as it desecrates the world's natural state of cleanliness, fertility and life.

I'm only bringing this up to show how Gege incorporates this religious framework into the body of symbolism in his story. And the further you search with these concepts in mind, the more you are able to uncover.

Satoru Gojo as purity and perfection

Satoru Gojo is a character whom you can't help but read as a perfection within the context of the world he exists in. He's the absolute strongest, wielding the power to bring all the knowledge of the universe and the forces which shape it under his control, he's repeatedly elevated by the narrative as someone unreachable and untouchable whereas nothing seems to be beyond his reach. He also has an extraordinary appearance, matching vibrant aquamarine eyes with fair hair, so rarely found among full-blooded Japanese people. He embodies an ideal for his society.

Satoru is associated with white and sky blue -- the colours most widely believed to represent purity, innocence, perfection, serenity and safety. Those are lofty, noble, airy and spacious hues which also bring in mind vast open spaces and immeasurable and unreachable heights and depths, symbolizing Gojo's detachment from the mundane world where corruption and putrefaction take deep root. Not to mention Satoru's noble background as an heir of one of the Big Three Sorcerer Families.

Actually no, forget this, I do want to mention it and expand a little on my thoughts regarding Satoru's family and upbringing. It's highly likely he was overprotected and sheltered as a child, and along with a teenage-years rebellion on his part which such a childhhod brought about, it also thwarted his ability to make connections with people around him as he basically lacks common experiences and/or interests with them. He's somewhat sterile when it comes to displaying empathy and emotional intelligence, which results in a peculiar sense of innocence about him. For the lack of any better way to articulate this idea, I'd say he's pure in this regard: clean and untouchable and spotless, devoid of nearly everything that comprises a regular person's experience.

This shows even in the way Gojo chooses to cope with his trauma in the aftermath of the Star Plasma Vessel Incident. That traumatic experience seemingly barely leaves a mark on him because he opts for pushing it aside and moving forward, while going out of his way to make sure there's a safe distance between him and the source of his vulnerability by improving his technique. He fixates on bringing his Infinity technique to perfection, and as a result it leaves no opportunity for anything to touch him if he himself does not want it to. Yet again, it leaves him stainless.

Not only that: he becomes emotionally detached from the cruelty and filth of the jujutsu world, becomes numb to it, with little to no emotion ever reaching his core to shake it. He's neither angry nor vengeful on Amanai's behalf after her death. He does not allow for hatred and spite to poison his mind, neither does he feel any doubt. He stays clean from all the negativity at the cost of coming off as cynical and unsympathetic.

He masks this by putting up a front of an emotionally immature individual with childlike mannerisms and an attitude resembling that of a teenager rather than a fully grown man. He also nurtures a somewhat naive belief that Suguru still can be trusted, that there's some hope for him turning away from the path he's chosen. In this regard, he still bears the innocence of a child.

Last but not least, shedding away the more humanly parts of himself, Gojo instead becomes more attuned to the natural world through his ascension -- the main source of purity, as Shinto has it. Moreover, he basically rejects death by coming back from the dead after finally grasping how Reversed Cursed Energy works. And I've already explained the importance of something like this when talking about Tsumiki's passing.

Gojo Satoru's mind is free from resentment and hate, his body unstained by death. He's a character who represents complete spiritual and physical purity.

Suguru Geto as impurity and corruption

Where Gojo's character exhibits perfection, Geto shows abruptly stunted growth and degradation gnawing away at him bit by bit; where Gojo stands to symbolize cleanliness and purity, Geto presents desolation and decay and that filth which is left in their wake. Geto is a character whom the narrative treats as a symbolic foil to Gojo, starting from him being expelled from Jujutsu High and ending with his death being described in the light novel as a curse purged from existence. If Gojo serves as an example of a perfectly fit cog in jujutsu society and sets up a desirable ideal, Geto, named the worst of all known curse users, represents everything that the very same society fears and despises.

Starting with colour symbolism again, such colours as black, dark brown, warm beige and mustard yellow are the most common colours to be associated with dirt and a filthy, dingy appearance. And while I'm not saying Suguru himself has such an appearance (although he does forsake taking care of himself at some point), those all are the colours found in his palette. Black is also considered to be the hardest colour to keep clean, even more so than white, as it shows all the stains and grime so well. Which is quite interesting if you consider that Suguru's downfall and defection ultimately bring out, both to the audience and to Satoru, everything not only malfunctioning, but straightforward cruel, vile and despicable in the existing system.

Geto's deeply empathetic personality is the basis for his own corruption, his inability to set boundaries between his own emotions and the suffering of others leaves him extremely vulnerable in a society which actively punishes people for being unable to extract emotion from their duty and caring too much. The thing is, Suguru is elbow-deep in emotion. For instance, if Satoru managed to shove his feelings aside in order to put together a plan of action when Kuroi got abducted, Suguru immeadiately plunged into self-blame. His own empathy is what's clouding his vision, his feelings pile up within him without any healthy outlet until they start rotting him from the inside.

Geto lets the rot in by caring too deeply, vile emotions that he feels on behalf of others festering in his mind. He can't stand the sight of atrocities commited by Jujutsu society and finds them nauseating, while the rest of the world he exists in treats those abominations as a norm. And even so, he dives deeper into all this by trying to make a difference and save ordinary people.

This is symbolically represented by Geto's Curse Manipulation, with him consuming curses which are basically a corporeal manifestation of all the negative emotions people vent into the world in their daily lives. The more curses he absorbs, the more doubt and resentment he lets inside and the more they consequently stain his once pure ideals and aspirations with bile building up inside of him. His very sense of self is twisted by the weight of the unsightly hideous reality, and while he stays true to his strict set of ideals he is forced to adapt by the trauma of his experience as a sorcerer and the 'realisation' which it brings. Because if one endures such severely traumatic events, one must sooner or later come to the conclusion that there's something inherently wrong and malfunctioning -- either with you or the world you live in. Geto chooses to stay true to himself by assuming it's the latter, and this choice results in his corruption in the eyes of those who run that very world.

There's also something to be said about the intimacy of the act of consumpton: you let the thing you consume nurture you and become a part of you. Cursed spirits taste absolutely foul, and what that means to put this despicable thing in your mouth and swallow it is unimaginable. Geto's absorbtion of curses is supposed to represent how he basically desacrates himself by letting himself experience everything at such a deep emotional level, inevitably tying himself to putrefaction of the world.

And of course, the last thing that plays its role in the defilement of Geto's character is his death.

Brief wrap-up thoughts

I could honestly ramble on and on about this for ages, but I guess it all just boils down to my admiration for Gege's ability to break the mold with his writing. He takes a trait which is largely associated with protagonists of their stories and shapes his villain's whole personality around it -- and vice versa, with Gojo and his seemingly egotistic tendencies.

Once again, Japanese religious beliefs organically encompass so many elements originating from so many cultures with no coherent systematization existing up untill late 19th centuary, and I find it absolutely fascinating how Gege's story reflects that. It leaves us with such an interesting controversy of an emotionally detached hero dwelling in a morally grey area alongside with a deeply empathetic antagonist whom both other characters and the audience find deserving of sympathy and pity.

[felixcloud6288]

Higurashi: Atonement Chapter 1

We open with a poem from Frederica Berkastel. She speaks of a repeating tragedy. As it repeats she goes from shock to agony to thinking its a vicious joke by the seventh time it's happened.

It is more than likely a coincidence since Beyond Midnight is a manga-only arc and not part of the core series, but this is the 7th arc. By now, we're probably becoming a bit numb to all the events that have happened and are just wondering how everything goes bad this time.

We have the return of Karin Suzuragi, who drew the art for Abducted by Demons, as well as the core cast. We haven't seen them together like this since Curse Killing. Shion's also there.

It really has been a long time since I've seen the cast just having fun, playing around, forcing each other into embarrassing cosplay, and Rena going nuts from a cuteness overload.

Ouch. Shion is not in that one group image.

This is the second answer arc and it's pretty clearly billed as the answer arc to Abducted by Demons. Just like that arc, Keiichi is our protagonist with Rena being the main girl...

Until the perspective flips half way through and Rena is the perspective character instead.

This is an answer arc. Keiichi asked himself why Rena seems sad and we get to know why.

We got to find out a little about Rena's past back in Abducted by Demons, but we can hardly say we know anything about her at this point. Now we get to see her home life with her divorced dad and his girlfriend Rina Mamiya.

Does that name sound familiar? That's the name of the woman who was killed in the beginning of Curse Killing. In chapter 7, Detective Delicious Ooishi gave a full dossier on her, including that she's involved in extortion and works for Teppei Hojo.

So we can look forward to trouble coming up in the future.

It's Kenta-kun!!

And this chapter ends with us finding out what this arc is going to be about.

Rena's behavior when it comes to Oyashiro-sama's curse has been an ongoing aspect of the story since the beginning. She's never been willing to talk about it and every moment she lets herself slip shows she's utterly traumatized by it.

But we just got a little glimpse of it at the end of this chapter when she saw maggots crawling in her blood. And this isn't the first time this has happened to her.

Last arc, we got the answer to Mion's involvement in the series of murders. This arc, we'll find out the secrets behind Oyashiro-sama's curse.

By the way, The new moon in 1983 was June 11 and the first quarter moon was June 17. So the waxing crescent means this arc is starting somewhere in that date range.

NIPA BEAM!!

back

Spoiler Discussion

Frederica's opening poem reflects a bit of the reader's feelings, but the juxtapose with Rika is a light foreshadowing of the big reveal in this arc. The poem is just as much about Rika's feelings on things. She died and came back then was killed over and over. At this point, she's used to it and has kind of given up on expecting to stop tragedy from happening.

[burningthemidnightcityoil]

AS IS ABOVE, SO IS BELOW - ASCENDING / DESCENDING ASPECTS

“ That which is above is like to that which is below, and that which is below is like to that which is above. “ - Latin-Translated Second Verse of the Emerald Table; a Hermetic Text

Let’s talk about Ascending / Descending.

The idea of Ascend / Descend is not new to Homestuck. Prior to the Scratch, there are many characters who Ascend and Descend at various points, be it a descent from the sky, or an ascent to power.

Ascending and Descending can be metaphorical, literal, or both.

What does this mean in comparison to the Aspects themselves?

It is the relation of those aspects who across the Space-Time Line, as seen here.

The very basic idea of Ascension is becoming more Divine, Heavenly you could say. 

While the idea of Descension could be a falling from grace... or it could simply be, Falling to Earth. Hell is still a divine place, no matter it demons, so to fall from divinity is to fall to morality, to Fall to the Earth Below.

As seen above, the ULTIMATE DESCENDING ASPECT is the Blood Aspect, and the ULTIMATE ASCENDING ASPECT is the Breath Aspect. They are CARDINAL ASPECTS, thus are both reflections and opposites.

Breath is the Heavens, and Blood is the Earth, and those aspects associated are henceforth the Heavenly Aspects and the Earthly Aspects.

(I swear, there’s anime about something like that somewhere)

... So what does this mean exactly?

“ That which is above is from that which is below, and that which is below is from that which is above. “ The Original Arabic Translation of the Second Verse of the Emerald Tablet.

There is enough similarity between Ascending-Descending aspects, that if we take certain conditions away--they would be indistinguishable from one another.

Heaven is a seat of Divinity from the perspective of Earth, but Earth is a Divine creation from the perspective of Heaven; both are holy for they are all made by their gods, not by their declaration.

Just as the idea of Earth being a place of suffering, so is the divine realm of Hell, an after place made of suffering.

Thus Earth will always be the basis of which we judge Ideality.

As is above, so is below.

Breath to Ideality, the Heavenly Aspect, vs Blood to Reality, the Earthly Aspect

Hope to Ultimate Ideality (Imagination / Divinity) vs Doom to Ultimate Reality (Death)

Mind to Mental Ideality (Mentality) vs Void to Physical Reality

Life to Ideal Experience vs Rage to Real Experience

Light to Ideal Self (That which we see of ourselves; Consciousness) vs Heart to Real Self (That which we present; The Unconsciousness)

I can note this from the Zodiac Aspect all I want, but it would mean nothing if I can’t apply it to Homestuck, now would it?

So let’s see how Descending / Ascending Aspects handle in Homestuck proper.

Terezi Pyrope is a Seer of Mind, but as seen in this picture, she’s blind folded herself (obscured vision), passed out on the ground (Blacked out), and looks generally like someone you want to Avoid.

Mind’s descending aspect is Void. Mind has been Grounded here.

I don’t have to describe this one, the video is literally “Seer: Descend”.

Rose has gone Grimdark (Darkness), from seeking INTIMATE knowledge regarding the CORE of unknown entities. This not long after learning her mother was murdered, and thus is on a revenge quest for the RELATIONSHIP. While she did BLACKOUT as Void tends to do, her darkness isn’t obscurity, but a shift of AESTHETICS.

She has not changed in PERSONA, we are merely seeing another FACET to her, though its been clearly and magically decorated to fit her mood.

Her aspect is Light, and it has Descended to the Heart Aspect; which is the Void’s Reflection Aspect.

Light has been Grounded here.

But surely its not just seeing Ideal Aspect Descend, what about some Ascending Aspects?

...

Well, Doom’s Ascending Aspect is Hope, and everything by this point was Sollux’s Hoping to either save the Troll Race (Which didn’t happen), or getting into the game before the VAST GLUB (which also didn’t happen), and hoping to rely on his friends... which got him killed.

And its... its Doom. You’re only gonna get so much with Doom.

Doom has been Raised / Razed here.

Gamzee is at his least violent in his first introductions, his most ideal as many could say. He’s relatively WELL-OFF, he’s seemingly has GOOD EXPERIENCES with everybody, he’s here for a GOOD TIME. He tends to eat Sopor PIES (Mind that every Life Player is associated with Baking). He’s also nigh UNKILLABLE, the stupid fucking bastard man.

He is a Bard of Rage, and Rage’s ascending Aspect is Life. Rage has been Raised / Razed here.

=#=

- The fact that Gamzee is on here gives a certain rule to Ascension / Descension in Aspects.

That the Ascending / Descending is often devastating to the Character themselves, as it means that they’re under a kind of duress. The conditions that separate an ascending / descending aspect from the other have been removed, and now the scale is going wild.

That isn’t to say that acting as the other aspect is bad. No Aspect is inherently bad, its only when you try to act as something without understanding yourself, that it becomes a horrible thing. Moderation or Balance, you could say.

There is no Balance when Ascension / Descension occurs.

- This does appear similar to the Inverse Theory. However, I don’t believe in switch classpects to their opposites when under duress.

To clarify, Ascending / Descending is the removal of Conditions of Balance. You are still your Classpect, but its either been “Grounded” (In the case of the Ideal Aspects) or its been “Raised / Razed” (In the case of the Reality Aspects); the line has blurred between the Descending Aspect and the Ascending Aspect--that is what is causing the problem.

 - It should also be noted that Time and Space players do run into Ascending / Descending Events, but its less an aspect grounding or an aspect rising, than it is a shift of circumstances.

[charcubed]

Some thoughts on The Winchesters after episode 5, and on self-reflection, and what it may tell us about Dean’s situation:

This was originally written as a thread on Twitter, which is (unfortunately) where I have historically done most of my meta writing. (Here is a collection of my Twitter posts about this show, including a few long meta threads.) I’m trying to get better about crossposting to tumblr ASAP when it's manageable.

All this to say that if this reads like it’s written in bite-sized chunks… that’s why. Also, I am writing this at midnight from an iPad lol.

So… This “Dean all the way down” show, if you will. In every episode of this show, its main characters highlight important things about Dean’s life and his relationships with others, as well as the unfinished parts of his story. Here’s a handy refresher, courtesy of my friend Matt.

I am compelled by the consistency of this (to the point of hypothesizing that Lata will be the main Dean mirror of the week in ep6).

I am also compelled by what is shaping up to be one of many consistencies in not only the themes but also the PLOTS of these episodes:

In every episode so far other than the pilot (I think?), someone is taken and trapped physically and/or mentally. Their freedom requires examining who they are as a person and what’s important to them, and/or examining who they are in relation to who they care about, mostly via reflective versions.

2: John, taken by La Tunda who punishes disobedient children & masquerades as Millie

3: Mary, taken by Bori Baba who lures you in with what you want most

4: John & Carlos, taken by a god of “destiny” who wants John to be like him

5: Mary, trapped in her mind by the Akrida

They’re all different situations, but at their core the key to freedom in the plot is always some form of self-reflection.

It’s making me wonder, because… well, we’re explicitly dealing with a narrative that’s cyclical, yes? We know that already, and the show’s not shy about it…

Cycles of violence + parents & children, on a micro level (Winchester family) and macro level (forces wanting to mold you into something you don’t want to be, or control you; Chuck/God as Father, destiny, and now Akrida).

But is it also a cycle in regards to this self-reflection?

Metaphorically, yes. This is what Dean is doing here and it’s why the characters are continuously acting as rotating mirrors for him. But what I’m beginning to wonder is if we’re meant to start taking it as hints to being literal for Dean, the way it is for the characters.

The characters repeatedly participate in self-reflection to free themselves from literal traps, and that self-reflections acts as reflection of Dean. What does this maybe tell us about what’s LITERALLY happening to Dean? Can we start piecing together that he’s trapped somewhere and uncovering/telling this story is key to his freedom?

🎶 Like a circle in a spiral

Like a wheel within a wheel

Never ending or beginning

On an ever spinning reel 🎶

They keep being trapped in places where they have to face aspects of who they are, who they love, and what haunts them. Maybe that’s the literal situation Dean could be in (fake Heaven trap?) and is part of the reason for the story he’s telling. Examining himself to break free.

I don’t know how front-facing in terms of the plot this may be. It could remain metaphorical. or be an extra-narrative reference about the prequel being its own thing but also a quasi stepping stone to a sequel.

But Dean being Trapped is, at this point, feeling pretty implicit.

Combine this with how mirror and reflective imagery is starting to visually pop up a little bit more.

And also combine it with all of the ways Tony’s story parallels Jack’s, and what that could imply about a “Chuck won” through-line… but I’m not getting into that tonight lol.

I am very intrigued. Everything about this is circular, and talking about one aspect kind of tips you into talking about another, which is FASCINATING story construction. So I’m sorry if I repeated myself here!

It’s reminiscent of a triskelion, naturally, a la the necklace in ep2.

Calling it quits for tonight because I am TIRED. Bottom line:

The repeated implication is that Dean is Trapped and doing self-reflection to try to break free. How literal that may or may not in terms of where/when he is remains to be seen, but… it’s feeling more and more pointed.

And I know I’m one of the foremost Chuck won preachers, okay, but I do try not to let it color my view of this show too strongly. I can’t help it that the material feeds me at every turn ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[terranoctis]

Stories of 2022

It’s been a year that’s kept me quite busy, so truth be told, I’ve gone through less stories this year than I would’ve wanted to. That being said, perhaps I’ve made stories of my own moreso, and that’s not a bad thing. Time changes your circumstances and I’m proud of what I’ve done this year. 

However, there’s been a few standout stories I’ve experienced/read/watched. Here’s a few thoughts on those, in no particular order:

MOVIES

1. Everything Everywhere All At Once

I would be highly remiss to not include this whatsoever, because it’s the one movie I can easily recall as my favorite of the year. I had a conversation earlier this week with two friends who I always talk movies with and all three of us unanimously agreed that it was our standout film of the year. As someone who is a daughter of an immigrant and has countless tales of being an Asian-American, it touches my heart all the more with its portrayal of generational trauma and the tension that arises when those generational differences are at odds. 

It’s one of those rare stories that touches on multiverses in a way that is its own--and in what a glorious way it does. It’s less about the multiverse and handles beautifully the personal aspects of a woman who could’ve been anybody--and was everybody in countless other universes, but understands the implication of being just the one person that they are and knowing that it’s worth so much. It’s a film that loves cinema, which is my favorite kind of film, in the way the cinematography is shot, in the messiness of all the wardrobes and costuming of this film, in its homages to films before it, and in the way there are key lines that are so heartfelt you cannot help but remember them for a long time. 

The cast for this film has been one of my favorite. No one is surprised at Michelle Yeoh’s acting chops if they’ve paid attention to cinema, but it’s the first film that’s allowed Ke Huy Quan to fully shine as an adult actor and introduced me to the wonderfully talented Stephanie Hsu. This deeply moving script allowed all three main actors and their ensemble cast to really show off that talent and I’m all the more grateful for it. It’s one of the rare films that is both a visual marvel (due to its wonderfully frenetic editing) and wonderfully well-written. It might not be for everyone, but I, for one, will sing praises for this film for a long time. 

2. Belle

The first film I saw in theaters this year was actually this film and I’m so wonderfully pleased that I did. It’s a story that is not without its flaws, and it’s not even the best animated film I’ve seen... but it’s a story that I can’t help but love because of how earnestly it is portrayed. It’s a story of love through grief and perhaps that’s why it hit closer to home for me. The animation is stunningly beautiful, merging various styles from across the world into a film that is held largely together with its core Japanese animation style from Mamoru Hosoda and his team. The main character Belle, or at least her avatar form in the virtual reality world ‘U’, is drawn by one of the lead character animators at Disney, and the design of her character reflects beautifully the retold Belle from Beauty and the Beast in this world. 

Even though the film is a retelling of the classic fairytale behind Beauty and the Beast, it’s surprisingly less about romantic love than it is about love in all its forms, particularly the kind of love can have when someone is at their lowest and scarred. That love can be for someone else--and it can also be for yourself. You do have a love between “Beauty” and the “Beast,” but that love is hardly portrayed in a romantic light. It’s the kind of love that someone has when they see someone in need and they want to help... and it’s a story that comes full-circle beautifully with the main character. 

I’m also a sucker for good music and Belle had some of the best music I’ve heard in any film this year. I literally had chills when the main character started singing for the first time as Belle, when she’s testing out her voice again in the reality of the virtual world--despite being unable to sing loud in real life. The songs all tie in beautifully to the overall themes of the film as well. 

GAMES

3. Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker

If last year was a story of my love for Shadowbringers in Final Fantasy XIV, this year was a story of my love for Endwalker. I unfortunately did not get to finish Endwalker during its release month as most others did, but I did get to finish it earlier this year. I can’t say that I loved it as much as Shadowbringers as an independent story, but as the culmination of every tale you’ve experienced as the Warrior of Light from A Realm Reborn to Shadowbringers, it’s a mastercraft in storytelling. For being able to resolve that tale in a way that hinges on some time-travel (which I’m a sucker for) and do it in such a heartfelt way and make you feel as the main character for all the people you’ve fought against and fought for in the past--Endwalker masterfully did so with amazing trials and cutscenes to boot. 

It isn’t to say the expansion didn’t have its poor moments. The pacing had some issues, but for an expansion finished in the pandemic, I understand why. I loved the overall story nonetheless and could deal with the pacing. The culmination of the whole Elpis arc and seeing how we became to be the Warrior of Light has been some of my favorite moments in the entire series. Not just in Final Fantasy XIV, but in all the Final Fantasy games I’ve played. 

Two of my favorite characters are also fleshed out in such wonderful ways this expansion. Venat and Hythlodaeus are easily two of my favorites of the game so far and it’s no wonder I loved the Elpis parts of the game so much. The end of the Hydaelyn-Zodiark saga with Endwalker was masterfully done and it makes me all the more excited to strike on a new adventure with the world. There’s also so many tales that I haven’t gotten to experience yet and I’ve been having a wonderful time jumping through all those tales as well as I wait for the next huge patch in the upcoming year. 

4. Stray

I played this rather late in the year, and it made my heart soft in all the good ways. I should state first I love cats, so I have some bias there. The game has you play as a cat wandering about a strange city filled with only robots. From the get-go, you even when you’re not yet in the city, you see that this world is devoid of all humans, wandering with a stray pack of cats. The city reflects this yet again, as you seem to be the only living being aside from Zurks, who are largely your antagonists in the game, as mutated bacteria life-forms. 

At a basic level, the game is you wandering as a cat. On a larger scale, it’s a game about what constitutes life and how simple things like friendship and companionship are emblematic of what make us living beings. The journey is played largely with you as the stray cat and your companionship with a small robot. I can’t say too much without spoiling the story, but it’s a beautiful, lovely little tale of friendship between a robot and a cat in a dystopian cyberpunk world. It’s worth a play if anyone ever gets a chance to do so. 

BOOKS

5. Nona the Ninth

This was one of my most anticipated books this year and I think one of the rare novels I actually binge-read within a few days even with school work and whatnot. I should say that I did love Harrow the Ninth more, but I loved this book in its own way. It’s a portrayal of a character who has made herself forget who she truly is and the horrendous things that have happened to her (and I mean, world-shattering, world-ending horrible things), perhaps because she wanted to save the girl whose body she inhabits and perhaps because she loved these people with her. It’s about love, for good or bad, and the kind of resurrections we put ourselves and others through in a testament to that love. The whole series of the Locked Tomb is love in its revenant forms, which I highly appreciate the more I occasionally re-read the novels and random passages. 

What makes the Locked Tomb series so humanely interesting to me is the way the narrator does not have the complete picture, by nature of their fragmented perspectives, but you as the reader do because you’re privy to the prior stories and other tales told through dreams or flashbacks. Nona is especially such a character because she is a “new” character, or rather a character who is seemingly unaware of her own true identity. The story leads you at first to believe she is perhaps one of the two previous main characters (Gideon or Harrow) in amnesiac form, but it becomes quite obvious she is a little bit of both in personality and perhaps neither of them at all. The more you read the story though, the more you begin to understand that perhaps she’s more aware than she lets on, but it’s because she’s so in love with the people around her that she doesn’t want to remember the trauma that made her something else. Thematic focuses aside, the writing is as fun as ever and where the Locked Tomb truly shines is with the personalities and dialogues of its characters. 

I wasn’t sure how to feel about Nona at first, but the more I read, the more I adored her and her love for the people around her. And the more I felt that trauma that all three protagonists of this series so far have felt and still found some semblance of love despite it. 

6. Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence

I should clarify I am still reading this at the moment, but it is already one of my favorite books of the year as I near the end of it. Translation as a magical weapon, translation as a means of colonialism--translation as a manifestation of something else... all these means of translation as not just a text-form thing, but something intrinsically cultural and used as a cultural weapon against its own people is utterly beautiful and devastating all at once. R.F. Kuang does an amazing job yet again with characterization of characters and that personal dilemma within the protagonist. I quite love the world-building in this one, having jumped from her previous works to this new world in Babel in the U.K. with silverworking and translation as a weapon. Since I’m still reading this novel, I won’t go into as much depth with it as I did the previous novel. For all I know, I might be missing a key piece of what makes this novel even greater. 

[shallowseeker]

Dean’s answer to the Harper-coded ideal of perfection:

So, last we left off, Harper was writing dreamily about how she's gonna find Jack and everything's gonna be PERFECT.

Which is why it's so beautiful to me that Dean, who has struggled with some of the same abandonment trauma and overall clinging to his first familial loves out of desperation, is the one to narratively provide a rebuttal to that!

Harper sighs dreamily and picks up her coffee mug of domesticity:

And the scene cuts to Jack, as if he's right there across from her. (He's sitting in her empty spaces, hundreds of miles away.)

And Jack is so satisfied. The coffee didn't taste good to him at the very beginning of the episode. He "couldn't get it how he liked it."

Now, it's very satisfying.

///

Harper and Jack are both satisfied is different ways. Harper, because she left her past behind, and Jack because he's proved himself as a capable hunter worthy of being brought into the family business. It's all part of growing up.

They are still thinking about each other and what they learned in meeting each other. Jack is specifically asking Dean about love:

JACK: And that's, love? DEAN: Eh, actually love can get crazier than that. And it might get crazier with Harper still out there. But, uh, you did good, kid.

In Jack's family kitchen, we find Dean sitting in the narrative "Harper position," fielding Jack's questions about love and providing important guidance.

But Harper's "mentor" space is sadly empty. She has no one to guide her. Only books. She gets her ideas about love...from books.

///

Jack leans a little into being Righteous here. "I was right! I should be going on more hunts!" This reminds us a little bit of Claire Novak, in 11x12 Don't You Forget About Me:

I was right!

///

But Dean? Dean gently redirects the conversation. Dean doesn't talk about perfection. It's not about being right. Or righteous, for that matter.

DEAN: Okay, alright. It's not about being right. Kay? You're gonna make mistakes, hell, I make them all the time. But it's how you handle yourself once you've made those mistakes and you've learned from them.

Dean's entire season 8 arc was about accepting the imperfect family: "love, and love." This is echoed again, just a few episodes later, with AU Michael taunting Dean specifically about Cas's mistakes:

AU MICHAEL: ...he "gripped you tight and raised you from Perdition." Or whatever. But since then, what has he done? Only made mistakes, one after the other.

AU Michael doesn't grasp the complexity of love and all its imperfections. Real, lasting love allows for mistakes and growth.

Anyway.

Mistakes!

And that lands for Jack. He considers the words, assessing, and like how he was with Harper, he gets a Very Good Emotional Read on Dean.

(Unlike Sam, a "brain" character, Jack's very much a heart character. He's GOOD at this aspect of humanity. He connects almost effortlessly, even when he's awkward.)

And especially because he and Dean (and Mary) are built similarly in their emotional cores and neuroses, he figures out exactly what Dean needs to hear, echoing their earlier convo about Michael—

(EARLIER IN THE EP:)

JACK: Dean, what happened with Michael, no one blames you. DEAN: Cool, well I blame me, so... ... JACK: Dean, I need to do something. You don't understand. I could have killed Michael. Here, when I was strong enough, I could have. But there was so much going on and then everything else happened because I was distracted and stupid and DEAN (angrily): Hey! You didn't do anything wrong. JACK: And neither did you! But that doesn't make it any easier does it?

—and reflecting a cheeky, wry comfort...right back at Dean himself.

JACK (adding to Dean's own advice): —and how to not beat yourself up over [those mistakes].

It hits its mark. ❤️

Dean tries to hide his resulting smile. We get his, "Stop seeing right through me, Kid," look:

DEAN: You know Jack, you're pretty smart sometimes. 

And Jack knows his words hit, that he's cheered Dean up. He's so pleased about it, too! He got 'im.

They're, very unfortunately for both of them, very much on the same wavelength with this sort of thing, with their neuroses and emotions, and they know it.

Jack starts to cough as he's laughing, and then--

///

Then, it's the beginning of the end for Dean and Jack:

DEAN: We'll get you a crate of cough drops. JACK: I'm fine. It's all a part of being human right? (coughs again) DEAN: You sure you're okay? JACK (realizing it's worse than he though): I...don't know. (His hand has blood from coughing in it.) Jack looks at Dean and Jack has a bleeding nose and then passes out. DEAN: Jack! Jack. Jack! Jack!

And here we go. And poor Dean is probably thinking, "Of course I don't get to keep him."

Even when you've accepted the imperfections of life, and you move past your tendency to cling to the past (and supposedly learn from your mistakes), a new trauma pops up and—and—

—and even though Dean is trying so hard to look forward, to grieve properly and appreciate what he has in the NOW, the truth is...it's very hard not to do EVERYTHING YOU CAN to help your loved one.

It's very hard NOT to keep them with you when you have the opportunity to save them!

Even if Harper is a twisted example of this, it's very human. Very understandable. Harper's darkest self lives in all of the main characters, and she's in all of us.

All Jack's dads will "pull a Harper" with Jack in Byzantium.

But because of what they went through together in this episode, Jack and Dean are trying so so so hard to let each other go ...at first. But, per the script, Dean can't help but give in because, "Having Jack back. He wants that more than anything."

///

Jack echoes this desperation too

Later, after he's revived, Jack echoes this desperation in Ouroboros. He's desperate to keep his family with him. His "first loves" are his family, and:

JACK: I hate seeing him like that. But he's gonna be okay, right? I mean, it's Dean. It was a fight. It was -- It was just a fight. CASTIEL: Every time we go out, there's always a risk. JACK: I-I can't think about losing him or -- or Sam or you. I-I just -- I hate -- I hate thinking about it. CASTIEL: Yeah. So do I. But, Jack you know, Sam and Dean, they're human, and they're very extraordinary, brave, special humans, but they're -- they're still humans. And humans burn bright, but for a very brief time compared to, you know, things like us. And eventually, they're gone, even the very best ones, and we have to carry on. It's just -- It's part of growing up. JACK: Losing people? CASTIEL: Yes. JACK (angrily): What's the point? CASTIEL: The point? JACK: What's the point of being a cosmic being if everyone I care about is just gonna leave? CASTIEL: The point is that they were here at all and you got to know them, you. When they're gone, it will hurt, but that hurt will remind you of how much you loved them. JACK: That sounds awful. CASTIEL: It is. But it's also living. So when Dean wakes up -- and he will wake up -- we just have to remember to appreciate the time that we all have together now. JACK: What if he doesn't wake up? [ Sighs ] What about Michael? What if -- CASTIEL: I don't know, Jack. JACK: Okay, but I could use my powers. CASTIEL: No, Jack, I know you want to help, but you cannot -- JACK: What is the good of having these powers if I can't help the people that I love, if I can't help them when they need it? Jack -- It's selfish of me not to.

Listen to how desperate he is--how the music dips in the scene. It's heartbreaking.

As a cosmic entity with practically no equal, doomed to regain his grace (in hundreds of years, he thinks), he’s become perhaps more afraid of being alone than even Dean is. Perhaps even more afraid than Harper is.

///end

Optimism freeform meta

Jack, Harper, and the folly of pursuing of immature, illusory Perfection as the antidote to life's many disappointments.

///

Okay, here it comes. It's our rambling, group Optimism meta from discord that I promised once upon a time I'd post here. Apologies ahead of time if I get your Tumblr names wrong.

Harper's flat is decorated in ooey-gooey symbols of love.

Green for growth (though Harper's growth pattern is certainly arrested), and red for passion. We have the green-Italian amore in the symbolic kitchen of life, and a bright red heart near the entrance.

BEWARE: You're entering Harper's heart. It's black and bloody.

We also see that her home is full to the brim with books and stories. She clings to them, hoping they'll bring her life meaning. The blood-red-pink-purple color theme continues in the form of her array of romance novels.

Harper herself is clothed in red, in a Sayles-coded corduroy, perhaps a mate to the hunter's anorak jacket. Her little scarf is certainly Scooby-Doo-Daphne-esque, but it's also a RED BANDANA calling to mind that she's an OUTLAW, like Dave Matthews in the Tombstone episode.

///

But her bedroom is more serene, stuffed with zen colors, serene green, and a bedful of childish stuff animals. It's dominated by strong protector-types like lions and elephants.

via @honeyedwhiskey: okay so I got intrigued by the fact that she has these particular stuffed animals. the lion, symbolizing stalking her prey, elephants for their memory and their brutality (maybe a nod to wanting community) and the tiger for her actual isolation. the puppy seems to be an older addition, maybe from childhood, and the smallest and most vulnerable one is being protected by the dog which seems to be a bear cub? reference to maybe a mama bear that protected her? the three at the top are what interest me the most though because harper is represented by the heart and the color red so the mouse is her, and the two pigs seem to be her parents, with one being a combination of colors and patchwork looking. so it seems to me that one of her parents was zombie-fied, maybe from a young age.

I like the symbolic nature Whiskey acribed to the stuffed animals above a lot!

I too think her reaction to abandonment and Vance speaks to something really fucked up in her necromancy family, like maybe a necromancy-coming-of-age-trial that went REALLY REALLY badly and wound up with her being totally alone.

Maybe it's like how Sam jokingly told Charlie: "You're not really a hunter till you've come back form the dead." Or like Cas told Jack of his own death, "It's something of a rite of passage around here."

Maybe you're not really a necromancer until you've killed and brought your family back and ofc Harper failing that test would fuck her up forever.

//

I noticed the teddy bear, too! There's a tee-tiny nod to the teddy-bear lovers' symbol above her bed, same as Marvelous Marvin has a red heart on his chest in season 15's Gimme Shelter. (And Dean's I Wuv Hugs from a million years ago.)

[The stuffed bear is] a simultaneous motif...of sexual intimacy and The Lover, it's also representative of The Beloved Child resulting from their contact.

(Jack is Marvin.)

///

Here's love in the corner, illuminated by two lamps. Harper is getting Jack a book, a book about her little beloved hometown, McCook.

Deep down, Harper is lonely, and unlike her disdain for her other suitors, she's a little different with Jack here: she wants to be understood.

She wants him to understand her and her hometown. Just a little. She's prodding at the niggling, unusual, UNFAMILIAR feeling. So, she sits down and invites him to sit, to learn more about her.

By this point, it's possible she's figured out he's a hunter, which opens up the possibility of revealing her true self, for better or for worse. It's an intoxicating thought for Harper.

Jack hesitates, clearly interested but also a little bit "!!!!"

He's framed by the heart on the wall. Indeed Jack, like Dean and Mary, is a "heart" character. He's even clothed in one of Mary's key colors: dusky orangey pink. (Aside// You'll notice Connor also wears this color in Gimme Shelter.)

///

Unlike in Tombstone, where Jack wasn't (via script) all that interested in Athena and Dave's relationship, now Jack's clearly grown. He's even interested in physicality.

Even though his emotional core can be kinda prickly, like Dean and Mary, he's at root a very affectionate character, interested in experience affection/connection with others:

So, he sits. Perseveres through he awkwardness. And lo and behold, Harper is as weird as he is.

They talk about having a positive outlook, even though they've had and terrible pasts, have done terrible things. And hey, look--she's getting the lamp treatment! How lovely.

They sit on the blue couch, as Harper tells him more about her past, subconsciously seeking his acceptance. The blue of the couch mirrors the blue color of her past, of her prom dress. We see her little prom queen crown, and we wonder...Harper is so awkward...

...does she really seem like the Prom Queen type?

I suspect it was fake. That she manufactured her own popularity with bit of magic. To meet the perfectionistic obsession with her romance tales. She is at core a fearful character, fearful of messing up, or being imperfect, of not living up to The Dream (TM).

///

Jack makes a quick getaway. In this shot, he's effectively the trope of the divine masculine, fleeing from love, "amore."

It's interesting that the kitchen, a bit like the bedroom, is earthier in tone, filled with more "valley" colors: of browns, greens. The kitchen is about the imperfect strivings of every day life, divorced from the high-dollar reds of Harper's romance-novel decor.

In the bathroom, Jack is clearly interested in exploring "love."

To Dean, he says, "Just in case (she is in love with me)...tell me everything you know about sex. Go!"

Jack is a curious-and-courageous character, too. He's prone to experimentation, which is also why he so often gets the drug ("I like cocaine!" and The Who) motifs. Like Cas, he's maybe a little scared, but he's going to go-for-it no matter how silly and awkward he might look.

That courage is probably something Harper senses in him. It's attractive to her, like the symbolic stuffed-animal lion-and-tiger protectors she has in her bedroom. She wonders:

"Is he strong enough to love the real me?"

In THIS sense, the thing with Vance isn't completely "a naughty nurse game." Deep down, at her root psychological base, Harper is testing the potential lovers' strength. Very classically mythical, really. And she's disgusted by her suitors because they keep failing and failing.

No one is like Vance. Not even Vance is like Vance. Her idea of Vance was never real, and she was never prom queen. But admitting that to herself is so painful, she constructs this horrible pattern of death and destruction.

///

"Her apartment has a lot of wallpaper/furniture from the 50’s! Or with that general aesthetic!" -Cal (Cal, what IS your handle these days)

It's so interesting, because this 50s retro theme is something that Jack, Dean, and Cas carry a lot, especially in terms of their "old-school" button-up pajamas and dressing downs. (Cas himself, with his overcoat, could be plopped in the middle of Mad Men tv series and fit into the surroundings, haha. And although we rarely see Sam carry the motif, but he dips into it in Peace of Mind as well.)

At the end of this episode, we'll see Harper seated in her own retro cafe with the same 50s vibe as well, a Charming Acres-sort of feeling. To me this symbolizes a backwards-looking illusion of perfection, that everything used to be simpler and better, and with enough effort, it can be simpler and better again.

Also there are dragonflies in her bathroom, a bit of a parallel to the lonesome fly plot that Sam and Charlie are on (in this same episode).

This too is the backwards-looking motif, of holding onto the illusory idea of Happiness (TM) so tightly that it becomes tragic and destructive.

///

Since even her idea of Vance isn't real, it's become like Amara's illusory idea of love. It can never let her down. "It can never hurt her."

[phantastus]

I don't know if you're actively answering questions right now but I have a kinda stupid question that I'm curious what your thoughts are on it. If you don't want to answer that's fine tho lol

Basically, uhh. What are your thoughts on Heather going by Cheryl post-game? Personally I'm conflicted about it, because while I understand the explanation given in-game, part of me feels like it partially defeats the purpose of being able to become her own person and everything... If she goes back to using the name that Harry regretted choosing because it made him see her as a replacement for SH1 Cheryl. But at the same time, it could also be seen as an acceptance of those before her? Idk honestly.

I wanted to ask you because, well, you've been into silent hill far longer than I, and seem very passionate about Heather as a character, so I figured you might have personal opinions on the matter. As I said though, it's fine if you never answer this because it's super out of the blue

I'll be curious to hear your thoughts if you do answer, though!

Hey there! I'm like, in a perpetual state of flux, but I do try to answer questions whenever I get them! (If I leave them for too long, the ADHD guilt sets in and then I never do it, lmao.....). And, it's not a stupid question!

I agree that I always found it a *little* bit head-tilty for the reasons you mentioned-- Harry himself did acknowledge that naming her Cheryl was a gesture borne of wishing things could be exactly the way they were, when the truth was that Cheryl as he knew her would never again exist. But I also think the other thing you mentioned holds weight-- a big aspect of SH3's plot imo was Heather regaining a full awareness of self (something she'd previously been repressing for her own safety, and unconsciously running away from her entire life) and coming to peace with the fact that her former "selves" were still part of her, even if she'd grown and changed.

This song (which is one of my all-time faves, tbh!!!!) really captures the aching sadness at the core of Silent Hill 3 for me. It's written as though from the point of view of Heather at an earlier point in her own lifetime, but symbolically I think it's also representative of Heather's relationship with Cheryl/Alessa-- not just as literal people, but as periods of time that no longer reflect her current feelings and understanding of the world, yet still EXIST within her nonetheless.

SH3 is, after all, a coming-of-age story-- a huge part of it is about grieving for the person you once were but are no longer. That moment of feeling disconnected from your childhood-- whether it's due to being unavoidably transformed by trauma, realizing that you're estranged from people you once loved in a way that will never be fixable, having the horrible knowledge that the 'you' people want is not the 'you' that you've become, OR EVEN just the simple passage of time... Obviously, SH3 presents those themes in a VERY literal fashion because Heather is dealing with actual reincarnation and past lives here, but I think when you boil it down to its essentials, that's what it's all about.

And OOF, that really hits me on a very personal level, which I think is why SH3 remains my favorite game in the series.

To bring this back around to your specific question though, I think that the most plausible interpretation of Heather going by 'Cheryl' again is that it's a mix of honoring Harry, and embracing/making peace on her own terms with the past she'd been running from for so long.

From a FULLY in-character perspective, I see post-game Heather primarily only going by Cheryl with people she fully trusts, and retaining Heather as her more commonly-used name (or EVEN picking out a completely new pseudonym, since I guess 'Heather' would be known to the Order now lmfao) for simple safety reasons.

SORRY FOR THE RAMBLING, I hope I actually answered your question! NEVER apologize for asking me to talk about Silent Hill, it's always encouraging to know that anybody wants to hear my unhinged ramblings, haha.

[samwisethewitch]

Everything You Need to Know About Pagan Deity

As you’ve probably guessed by now, there are many, many, many different approaches to deity within the wider pagan community. While it would be impossible to summarize all of these different perspectives in a single blog post, this post contains some common themes and best practices that are more or less universal and can be adapted to fit whatever system you choose to work with.

In my Baby Witch Bootcamp series, I talk about the “Four R’s” of working with spiritual beings, including deities: respect, research, reciprocity, and relationship. However, when it comes to gods and goddesses specifically, I think it’s important to include a fifth “R” — receptivity.

If you’re completely new to this kind of work and want to avoid making rookie mistakes and/or pissing off powerful spiritual forces, sticking to the Five R’s of Deity Relationships is a good place to start. The Five R’s are:

Respect. It’s always a good idea to have a healthy respect for the powers you choose to connect with, whether you see those powers as literal gods and goddesses or as archetypes within the collective unconscious (see below). While not every ritual needs to be incredibly formal and structured, you should always conduct yourself with an air of respect and reverence when connecting with deity. There’s no need to humble yourself to the point of cowering before the gods (and in fact, this kind of behavior is a turnoff for many deities), but you should strive to be polite and follow your system’s proper protocol for things like cleansing, offerings, and prayers.

Research. I am of the opinion that you should do serious research into a god or goddess before any attempt to make contact with them. This can be controversial, but in my own experience things seem to go more smoothly when I know what I’m doing. Books are really the way to go for this — the Internet can be useful for connecting with other worshipers and hearing their stories, but it isn’t a good source for nonbiased factual information. I recommend starting with academic sources written by secular experts for a purely historical account that won’t be colored by personal religious experience. Once you have a decent understanding of the basic historical context, look for books by pagan authors who have experience working with this deity. These sources will give you a framework for your own interactions with them.

Reciprocity. As we’ve discussed before, reciprocity is a core value of virtually every pagan tradition. Reciprocity is a mutual positive exchange where all parties benefit in some way, and this quality forms the backbone of all healthy relationships with deity. While we benefit from connecting with the gods, the gods also benefit from our worship. Upholding reciprocity in your relationships with deity means making regular offerings to show your appreciation as well as living in a way that your god or goddess approves of.

Relationship. At the end of the day, connecting with a god or goddess is about creating a healthy, fulfilling relationship. Like any relationship, it takes time and effort to keep the connection alive. The gods are living, thinking, feeling beings just like you and me, though on a much larger scale. Just like you and me, they have likes and dislikes and require certain things from those who want to work closely with them. Try to approach the gods as individuals, and connect with them as you would with another person. This will naturally lead to much more authentic and organic relationships.

Receptivity. To be receptive is to be open and ready to receive whatever comes your way — this is an essential quality for anyone who is serious about connecting with a god or goddess. Connecting with the gods means allowing them a place in your life, whatever they choose to bring with them. It means forming a relationship with them on their terms, and that requires us to give up a certain degree of control. While you should never feel afraid or completely out of control when connecting with deity (if you do, stop contacting that deity immediately), you may very well experience things you did not expect or ask for. Be prepared for these surprises, and understand that when the gods surprise us in this way, they do it in order to help us grow. Let go of any preconceived ideas about what a relationship with this deity “should” look like, and instead let it unfold naturally.

Though there is much more to working with deity than just these values, keeping these values in mind will get you started out on the right foot in your relationships with the gods.

Deity or Archetype?

As odd as it may sound, not everyone who connects with the gods through study and ritual believes those gods to be literal spiritual beings. Some pagans (I would even say the majority of pagans, based on my personal experience) connect with the gods as individuals with their own personalities and agency, but others connect with them as symbols that represent different elements of the human experience. This latter group is working with the gods not as deity, but as archetypes.

The term “archetype” comes from academia, particularly the fields of psychology and literary analysis. An archetype is a symbol that embodies the fundamental characteristics of a person, thing, or experience.

Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung argued that archetypes are powerful symbols within the collective unconscious (basically an ancestral memory shared by all of humanity) that arise due to shared experiences across cultures. For example, Jung would argue that Demeter, Juno, and Frigg all represent the “Mother” archetype filtered through different cultural lenses, reflecting the important role of mothers across Greek, Roman, and Old Norse culture. For Jung and his followers, archetypes allow us to connect to latent parts of our own psyche — by connecting with the Mother archetype, for example, you can develop motherly qualities like patience, empathy, and nurturing.

For comparative mythology expert Joseph Campbell, archetypes represented types of characters that appear in some form in most or all global mythology. In his book, The Hero of a Thousand Faces, Campbell identified the “hero’s journey” as the archetypal narrative framework on which most stories, from ancient myths to modern films, are based. (If you’ve taken literally any high school literature class, you’re probably familiar with Campbell’s work.) Like Jung, Campbell has been hugely influential on modern pagans who choose to connect with the gods as archetypes.

Working with an archetype is a little different than working with a deity. For one thing, while archetypes may manifest as gods and goddesses, they can also manifest as fictional characters, historical figures, or abstract symbols. Let’s say you want to tap into the Warrior archetype. You could connect with this archetype by working with gods like Mars, Thor, or Heracles — but you could just as easily do so by working with superheroes like Luke Cage or Colossus, literary figures like Ajax or Achilles, or the abstract concepts of strength and honor.

When pagans worship a deity, it’s because they want to form a relationship with that deity for some reason. But when pagans work with an archetype, it’s usually because they want to embody aspects of that archetype. In our above example, you may be trying to connect to the Warrior archetype to gain confidence or become more assertive.

The biggest difference between worshiping a deity and working with an archetype is that a deity is an external force, while an archetype is an internal force. When you connect with a deity, you are connecting with a spiritual being outside of yourself — a being with their own thoughts, feelings, and drives. When you connect with an archetype, you are connecting with a part of your own psyche. Because of this, archetypes tend to be more easily defined and behave in more predictable ways than deities, although some archetypes can be very complex and multi-faceted.

On the surface, worship and archetype work might be very similar, but the “why” behind the action is fundamentally different.

If you choose to worship the Morrigan, for example, you may have an altar dedicated to her, make regular offerings to her, speak with her in meditations and astral journeys, and/or write poetry or make art in her honor. If you choose to work with the Wild Woman archetype, it may look very similar to an outside observer — you may have an altar dedicated to the Wild Woman energy, speak with manifestations of Wild Woman (perhaps including the Morrigan) in meditation, and write poetry or make art dedicated to this archetype. However, these actions will have a very different intent behind them. Your Wild Woman altar is not a sacred space but a visual trigger to help you connect to the Wild Woman within you. Your meditations are conversations with different aspects of your own personality, not with a separate being. Your art is an expression of self, not a devotional act. The result is a deeper connection to yourself, not a relationship with another being.

I hope I’ve made it clear that archetype work and deity worship can both be very worthwhile spiritual practices, and that each serves its own purpose. Many pagans, myself included, work with both deities and archetypes.

There is some overlap between worshiping a deity and working with an archetype, and many pagans start out with one practice before eventually ending up in the other. Sometimes working with an archetype leads you to encounter a deity who embodies that archetype, which can lead to a relationship with that deity. Likewise, your relationship with a deity may help you become aware of a certain archetype’s influence in your life, which might lead you to work with that archetype.

Making First Contact

First impressions are important. This is true for making new friends, for job interviews, for first dates — and for your first meeting with a god or goddess. In many cases, the way you behave in your first meeting with a deity will set the tone for your relationship with them.

That being said, don’t overthink (or over-stress) about your first impression. You aren’t going to be cursed or punished if you mess this up — at the very worst, the deity might lose interest in connecting with you, and even that can often be remedied with an offering and a polite apology. While it’s always best to get off on the right foot, don’t feel like you need to be perfect.

So, how do you make a good first impression on a god or goddess? Honestly, the rules are largely the same for making a good first impression on any other person. Make sure your physical appearance is clean and tidy — some systems, such as Hellenismos and Kemetic paganism, have special rules for cleansing before contacting the gods, but it’s always a good idea to take a shower first and make sure you’re wearing clean clothes. Likewise, make sure the physical space you invite the gods into is relatively clean — it doesn’t need to be spotless, but take a minute to tidy up before beginning any ritual. Be polite — there’s no need to be overly formal, but you should be respectful. Don’t immediately ask for favors — how would you feel if you met someone at a party and they immediately asked you to do some sort of work for them?

Beyond the basics, it’s wise to make sure you have an idea of who this god is and what they are like before you reach out to them. This will keep you from accidentally doing something offensive. For example, you wouldn’t want to invite them to an altar dedicated to a deity they have a rivalry with. Likewise, you want to avoid offering food or drink that would have been taboo in their original worship. (Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, but when you’re just starting out it’s a good idea to follow the historical framework as closely as possible.)

At the risk of sounding like a broken record: this is why research is so important. Knowing who you are dealing with allows you to deal with them respectfully, gracefully, and competently.

Callings

There’s one aspect of deity worship that is controversial in modern paganism: the idea of being “called” by a deity. This is a question you’ll find many, many heated discussions about online. Do you need to be called by a deity to form a relationship with them? Do deities choose their followers, or do we choose them? How do you know what a call from a deity even looks like?

As I said, this is a controversial topic, but I firmly believe that 1.) you do not have to feel called to a deity beyond being interested in them, and 2.) feeling drawn to a deity’s image, symbols, and myths is a form of calling.

Many pagans do feel like they were called or drawn to the deities they walk most closely with. They may have encountered myths of that deity as a child or teenager and deeply resonated with them, or may have always had an affinity for that god’s sacred animals. They may have dreamed of this deity before knowing who they were, or may have felt a spiritual presence around them before identifying it as a god or goddess.

Many people first encounter the gods in fiction, only for this fictionalized depiction to spark a deeper connection that eventually leads to worship. In the modern era, it’s entirely possible for someone who worships Loki to have first encountered him (or at least a character loosely based on him) in Marvel comics and films, or for someone who worships the Greek pantheon to have first discovered them through the Percy Jackson books. As far as I’m concerned, this is also a valid “call” from deity. The gods are very good at communicating with us through the means available — including fiction.

That being said, just because you don’t already feel a strong connection to a god or goddess doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t worship them. The connection will come with time and effort, just like in any relationship.

Dedication, Patrons, and Matrons

In online spaces such as Tumblr and TikTok, a lot of inexperienced pagans parrot the idea that every pagan needs to have a designated matron and/or patron god and/or needs to be formally dedicated to a god in order to have a close relationship with them. Not only is this untrue, but such restrictions can actually cause harm and/or stunt spiritual growth.

Let’s address dedication first. To be dedicated to a deity means to outwardly declare yourself a servant of that deity, usually with a formal dedication ritual — think of it as the pagan version of joining a convent or going to seminary. It is an outward expression of your devotion and loyalty to that deity. Dedicants are held to a higher standard than the average worshiper by themselves, their communities, and the god(s) they have dedicated to.

Dedication can be a powerful and fulfilling spiritual experience (it’s the backbone of many peoples’ spiritual practice), but it should not be taken lightly. Dedicating yourself to a god or goddess should be a sign of your commitment to them and a deepening of your relationship — it should not be the beginning of that relationship.

Dedication is a lot like marriage. Just like you wouldn’t marry someone you’ve only been on a handful of dates with, you shouldn’t dedicate to a deity just because you’ve had one or two positive experiences with them. Like marriages, dedication can be difficult to get out of — ending your dedication to a deity is possible, but it’s a messy, complicated, uncomfortable process that is sure to shift the foundation of your entire spiritual practice, and not always for the better.

My advice to new and inexperienced pagans is not to even consider dedication until you’ve been practicing for several years. As you begin your journey, your focus should be on exploring your options, forming meaningful connections, and developing a practice that works for you and your unique spiritual needs. Now is the time for experimentation, not lifelong commitments.

But let’s say you are an experienced pagan, and you feel like you are ready for dedication. How do you know if you should dedicate to a given god or goddess?

Dedication may be the logical next step in your relationship with a deity if:

This deity has been an active part of your spiritual practice for at least 2-3 years, with no major gaps in contact with them

You are comfortable upholding this deity’s values for the rest of your life — and are willing to face consequences if you fail to do so

You are willing to dedicate a significant amount of time and effort to the service of this deity

You are willing to face major changes in your life outside your spiritual practice — dedicating to a deity often leads to major shifts that may affect our career, family, and/or relationships

If you answered “yes” to all of the above, dedication may be appropriate. This may seem overly cautious, but remember that dedicating to a deity is a serious, lifelong commitment akin to joining the clergy. For context, it takes at least five years of study and practice to become a Catholic priest, a similar amount of time to become a Jewish rabbi, and three years to become a high priest/ess in Traditional Wicca. If you don’t have the patience to maintain a relationship for a few years before dedication, that is probably a good indicator that dedication isn’t for you.

If you are dedicated to a deity or are planning to dedicate, you may actually choose to attend seminary or receive some other formal religious training. This training will help you to better serve your deity in a public capacity, as you will learn skills like religious counselling, leading ritual, and building community. If your program of study includes ordination, it will also allow you to perform legally binding religious rituals like marriage ceremonies. Depending on your path, attending seminary or training may be your act of formal dedication.

Finally, let me make it clear that dedication does not make you a better pagan than someone who is not dedicated. The choice to dedicate or not dedicate is only one element of your spiritual practice, and it is possible to have a fulfilling and life-affirming practice without dedication. Some of the people who do the most work in the service of the gods are not dedicated to them. You may be one of these people, and that is totally okay.

Patron/matron relationships are a specific type of dedication.

The concept of patron deities comes from Wicca and related neopagan religions. As we’ve previously discussed, Wicca is a duotheistic system with a God and Goddess, whose union is the source of all creation. However, because Wiccans believe that all gods are manifestations of the God and all goddesses are manifestations of the Goddess, some covens choose to work with the God and Goddess in the form of other deities (say, for example, Osiris and Isis), which are referred to as the coven’s “patron” and “matron” deities. In these covens, initiation into the coven’s mysteries (traditionally in the form of first, second, and third degree initiations) typically acts as a form of dedication to these deities.

As Eclectic Wicca has gained popularity in the last few decades, there has been a growing trend of individual Wiccans and eclectic pagans choosing personal patron and/or matron deities. Some Wiccans will have a single god or goddess they are dedicated to, while others feel that it is very important to be dedicated to exactly one masculine deity and exactly one feminine deity. This second model is the one I see most often in online pagan spaces, especially Tumblr and TikTok.

The patron/matron model can be useful for some pagans, but it is not one-size-fits-all. As I mentioned, this model of dedication comes from Wicca, and is a very modern concept. In ancient pagan religions, most people would not have been dedicated in this way. That does not mean that this isn’t a valid form of worship (it absolutely is), but it does mean that those who practice reconstructionist paths may not be inclined to interact with deity this way.

The guidelines for patron/matron relationships are similar to the guidelines for dedication in general, but these relationships often (but not always) have a more parental nature. For some people, having a divine mother and/or father figure is ideal — especially for those who are healing from parental trauma or abuse. If you feel drawn to this type of deity relationship, I encourage you to explore it.

On the other hand, you may not have any interest in the patron/matron model, and that’s totally fine! It’s called polytheism for a reason — if you prefer to maintain less formal relationships with many gods, you should feel free to do so.

I hope this post has helped clarify some of the murkier aspects of polytheism and deity work. Obviously, this is only the tip of the iceberg — I could write a book about this topic and many, many authors already have. However, I think the information here is enough to get you started, and I hope that it will provide a first step on your journey with your gods.

Resources:

Wicca for Beginners by Thea Sabin

A Witches’ Bible by Janet and Stewart Farrar

The Spiral Dance by Starhawk

Where the Hawthorn Grows by Morgan Daimler

The Way of Fire and Ice by Ryan Smith

Jessi Huntenburg (YouTuber), “Dancing with Deity | Discovering Gods, Goddesses, and Archetypes,” “Archetype, Deity, and Inviting Transpersonal Experience,” and “10 Ways to Bond with Deity”

Kelly-Ann Maddox (YouTuber), “How to Have Deep Connections with Deities”

[liquidstar]

I feel as if many people, myself included, have been having problems with the way “critical thinking” is conducted in fandom circles more and more. Which I’d say is a good thing, because it means we’re thinking critically. But still the issues with the faux-critical mentality and with the way we consume media through that fandom group mentality are incredibly widespread at this point, despite being very flawed, and there are still plenty of people who follow it blindly, ironically.

I sort of felt like I had to examine my personal feelings on it and I ended up writing a whole novel, which I’ll put under the cut, and I do welcome other people’s voices in the matter, because while I’m being as nuanced as I can here I obviously am still writing from personal experience and may overlook some things from my limited perspective. But by and large I think I’ve dissected the phenomena as best I can from what I’ve been seeing going on in fandom circles from a safe but observable distance.

Right off the bat I want to say, I think it's incredibly good and necessary to be critical of media and understand when you should stop consuming it, but that line can be a bit circumstantial sometimes for different people. There are a lot of anime that I used to watch as a teenager that I can’t enjoy anymore, because I got more and more uncomfortable overtime with the sexualization of young characters, partly because as I was getting older I was really starting to realize how big of an issue it was, and I certainly think more critically now than I did when I was 14. Of course I don’t assume everyone who still watches certain series is a pedophile, and I do think there are plenty of fans that understand this. However I still stay away from those circles and that’s a personal choice.

I don’t think a person is morally superior based on where they draw the line and their own boundaries with this type of stuff, what’s more important is your understanding of the problem and response to it. There are series I watch that have a lot of the same issues around sexualization of the young characters in the cast, but they’re relatively toned down and I can still enjoy the aspects of the series I actually like without it feeling as uncomfortable and extreme. Others will not be able to, and their issues with it are legitimate and ones that I still ultimately agree with, but they’re still free to dislike the series for it, after all our stance on the issue itself is the same so why would I resent them for it?

Different people are bound to have different lines they draw for how far certain things can go in media before they’re uncomfortable watching it and it doesn’t make it a moral failing of the person who can put up with more if they’re still capable of understanding why it’s bad to begin with and able to not let it effect them. But I don’t think that sentiment necessarily contradicts the idea that some things really are too far gone for this to apply, the above examples aren’t the same thing as a series centered solely around lolicon ecchi and it doesn’t take a lot of deep analysis to understand why. It’s not about a personal line anymore when it comes to things that are outright propaganda or predatory with harmful ideals woven into the message of the story itself. Critical thinking means knowing the difference between these, and no one can hold your hand through it. And simply slapping “I’m critical of my interests” on your bio isn’t a get out of jail free card, it’s always evident when someone isn’t truly thinking about the impact of the media they consume through the way they consume it.

I think the issue is that when people apply “Critical thinking” they don’t actually analyze the story and its intent, messages, themes, morals, and all that. Instead they approach it completely diegetically, it’s basically the thermian argument, the issue stems from thinking about the story and characters as if they’re real people and judging their actions through that perspective, rather than something from a writer trying to deliver a narrative by using the story and characters as tools. Like how people get upset about characters behaving “problematically” without realizing that it’s an intentional aspect of the story, that the character needs to cause problems for there to be conflict. What they should be looking at instead is what their behavior represents in the real world.

You do not need to apply real-world morals to fictional characters, you need to apply them to the narrative. The story exists in the real world, the characters and events within it do not. Fictional murderers themselves do not hurt anyone, no one is actually dying at their hands, but their actions hold weight in the narrative which itself can harm real people. If the character only murders gay people then it reflects on whatever the themes and messages of the story are, and it’s a major issue if it's framed as if they’re morally justified, or as if this is a noble action. And it’s a huge red flag if people stan this character, even if the story itself actually presents their actions as reprehensible. Or cases where the murderers themselves are some kind of awful stereotype, like Buffalo Bill who presents a violent and dangerous stereotype of trans women, making the character a transmisogynistic caricature (Intentional or otherwise) that has caused a lot of harm to the perception of trans women. When people say “Fiction affects reality” this is what they mean. They do not mean “People will see a pretend bad guy and become bad” they mean “Ideals represented in fiction will be pulled from the real world and reflected back onto it.”

However, stories shouldn’t have to spoon-feed you the lesson as if you’re watching a children’s cartoon, stories often have nuances and you have to actively analyze the themes of it all to understand it’s core messages. Oftentimes it can be intentionally murky and hard to parse especially if the subject matter itself is complicated. But you can’t simply read things on the surface and think you understand everything about them, without understanding the symbolism or subtext you can leave a series like Revolutionary Girl Utena thinking the titular Utena is heterosexual and was only ever in love with her prince. Things won’t always be face-value or clear-cut and you will be forced to come to your own conclusions sometimes too.

That’s why the whole fandom-based groupthink mentality about “critical thinking” doesn’t work, because it’s not critical. It’s simply looking into the crowd, seeing people say a show is problematic, and then dropping it without truly understanding why. It’s performative, consuming the best media isn’t activism and it doesn’t make you a better person. Listening to the voices of people whom the issues directly concerns will help you form an opinion, and to understand the issues from a more knowledgeable perspective beyond your own. All that means nothing if you just sweep it under the rug because you want to look infallible in your morality. That’s not being critical, it’s just being scared to analyze yourself, as well as what you engage with. You just don’t want to think about those things and you’re afraid of being less than perfect so you pretend it never happened.

And though I’m making this post, it’s not mine or anyone else’s job to hold your hand through all this and tell you “Oh this show is okay, but this show isn't, and this book is bad etc etc etc”. Because you actually have to think for yourself, you know, critically. Examples I’ve listed aren’t rules of thumb, they’re just examples and things will vary depending on the story and circumstance. You have to look at shit on a case-by-case basis instead of relying on spotting tropes without thinking about how they’re implemented and what they mean. That’s why it’s analysis, you have to use it to understand what the narrative is communicating to its audience, explicitly or implicitly, intentionally or incidentally, and understand how this reflects the real world and what kind of impact it can have on it. 

A big problem with fandom is it has made interests synonymous with personality traits, as if every series we consume is a core part of our being, and everything we see in it reflects our viewpoints as well. So when people are told that a show they watched is problematic, they react very extremely, because they see it as basically the same thing as saying they themselves are problematic (It’s not). Everyone sees themselves as good people, they don’t want to be bad people, so this scares them and they either start hiding any evidence that they ever liked it, or they double down and start defending it despite all its flaws, often providing those aforementioned thermian arguments (“She dresses that way because of her powers!”).

That’s how you get people who call children’s cartoons “irredeemable media” and people who plaster “fiction=/= reality!” all over their blogs, both are basically trying to save face either by denying that they could ever consume anything problematic or denying that the problematic aspects exist all together. And absolutely no one is actually addressing the core issues anymore, save for those affected by them who pointed them out to begin with, only for their original point to become muffled in the discourse. No one is thinking critically because they’re more concerned with us-vs-them group mentality, both sides try to out-perform the other while the actual issue gets ignored or is used as nothing more than a gacha with no true understanding or sympathy behind it.

One of the other issues that comes from this is the fact that pretty much everyone thinks they’re the only person capable of being critical of their interests. That’s how you get those interactions where one person goes “OK [Media] fan” and another person replies “Bro you literally like [Other Media]”, because both parties think they’re the only ones capable of consuming a problematic piece of media and not becoming problematic themselves, anyone else who enjoys it is clearly incapable of being as big brained as them. It’s understandable because we know ourselves and trust ourselves more than strangers, and I’m not saying there can’t be certain fandoms who’s fans you don’t wanna interact with, but when we presume that we know better than everyone else we stop listening to other people all together. It’s good to trust your own judgement, it’s bad to assume no one else has the capacity to think for themselves either though.

The insistence that all media that you personally like is without moral failing and completely pure comes with the belief that all media that you personally dislike has to be morally bad in some way. As if you can’t just dislike a series because you find it annoying or it just doesn’t appeal to you, it has to be problematic, and you have to justify your dislike of it through that perspective. You have to believe that your view on whatever media it is is the objectively correct one, so you’ll likely pick apart all it’s flaws to prove you’re on the right side, but there’s no analysis of context or intent. Keep in mind this doesn’t necessarily mean those critiques are unfounded or invalid, but in cases like this they’re often skewed in one direction based on personal opinion. It’s just as flawed as ignoring all the faults in the stuff you like, it’s biased and subjective analysis that misses a lot of context in both cases, it’s not a good mindset to have about consuming media. It’s just another result of tying media consumption with identity and personal morals. The faux-critical mentality is an attempt to separate the two in a way that implies they’re a packaged deal to begin with, making it sort of impossible to truly do so in any meaningful way.

As far as I know this whole phenomena started with “Steven Universe Critical” in, like, 2016, and that’s where this mentality around “critical thinking” originated. It started out with just a few people correctly pointing out very legitimate issues with the series, but over time it grew into just a trend where people would make cutesy kin blogs with urls like critical-[character] or [character]crit to go with the fad as it divulged into Nostalgia Critic level critique. Of course there was backlash to this and criticism of the criticism, but no actual conversation to be had. Just people trying to out-do each other by acting as the most virtuous one in the room, and soon enough the fad became a huge echo-chamber that encouraged more and more outrageous takes for every little thing. The series itself was a children’s cartoon so it stands to reason that a lot of the fans were young teens, so this behavior isn’t too surprising and I do believe a lot of them did think they were doing the right thing, especially since it was encouraged. But that doesn’t erase the fact that there were actual real issues and concerns brought up about the series that got treated with very little sympathy and were instead drowning out people’s voices. Though those from a few years back may have grown up since and know better (Hopefully), the mentality stuck around and influenced the norm for how fandoms and fandom people conduct any sort of critique on media. 

That’s a shame to me, because the pedestal people place fandom onto has completely disrupted our perception on how to engage with media in a normal way. Not everything should be consumed with fandom in mind, not everything is a coffee-shop au with no conflict, not everything is a children’s cartoon with the morals spoon-fed to you. Fandom has grown past the years of uncritical praise of a series, it’s much more mainstream now with a lot more voices in it beyond your small community on some forum, and people are allowed to use those voices. Just because it may not be as pleasant for you now because you don’t get to just turn your brain off and ignore all the flaws doesn’t mean you can put on your rose-tinted nostalgia goggles and pretend that fandom is actually all that is good in the world, to the point where you place it above the comfort and safety of others (Oftentimes children). Being uncritical of fandom itself is just as bad as being uncritical of what you consume to begin with. 

At the end of the day it all just boils down to the ability to truly think for yourself but with sympathy and compassion for other people in mind, while also understanding that not everyone will come to the same conclusion as you and people are allowed to resent your interests. That doesn’t necessarily mean they hate you personally, you should be acknowledging the same issues after all. You can’t ignore aspects of it that aren’t convenient to your conclusion, you have to actually be critical and understand the issues to be able to form it. 

I think that all we need is to not rely on fandom to tell us what to do, but still listen to the voices of others, take them into account to form our opinion too, boost their voices instead of drowning them out in the minutiae of internet discourse about which character is too much of an asshole to like. Think about what the characters and story represent non-diegetically instead of treating them like real people and events, rather a story with an intent and message to share through its story and characters, and whatever those reflect from the real world. That’s how fiction affects reality, because it exists in reality and reflects reality through its own lens. The story itself is real, with a real impact on you and many others, so think about the impact and why it all matters. Just… Think. Listen to others but think for yourself, that’s all.

[nastyburger]

the tucker ghouly gang!

i promise you this is the least sad out of all the stories i know you guys dont trust me after mourner bUT TRUST ME

anyway, tucker’s ghost story! danny’s parents built the portal and it doesnt work as always. sometime in the morning the next day, danny goes into the portal by himself (no sam or tucker present), accidentally hits the switch, and.........nothing happens! being unable to find or fix the problems of the portal, danny just leaves and goes on about his day until his friends come over.

sam and tucker arrive later for a sleepover, they eat, play games, normal teenager stuff well into the night. the trio tries to sleep, but danny is kept up. he really wanted to figure out what was wrong with the portal and get it to work. his parents have been working on this project practically his entire life, and now the thing wont even turn on?! not to mention he was just plain curious about what was on the other side. the others notice their friend’s plight and so danny relays what happened earlier that day and his grievances about it. after mentioning how danny hit an on/off switch only for nothing to happen, tucker suggests that the button might’ve been wired wrong.

tucker, knowing his way around wiring electronics, offers to check out the portal. danny allows this and the trio all sneak down into the basement, still in their pjs. tucker picks up a few tools from the fenton lab, works on rewiring, danny and sam watching from outside. eventually, tucker is successful in the fix. but the gang forgot to unplug the portal/turn off the electricity so when tucker puts everything in place it turns on and you know the rest.

(not terribly important, but danny’s pjs is a simple black t-shirt with starry print pajama pants and sam’s would be a green pajama set ((the kind with a button up shirt and the same pattern over the whole thing)) with a white grid pattern. tucker’s pajama’s was a superhero onesie type thing, the circuit patterns on it being reflective material. as his ghost outfit, the circuit patterns now light up/appear when he uses his electricity powers. they are otherwise hidden.)

the fentons, sleeping upstairs in their room, rush down to the lab hearing all the commotion. by this time, tucker was already out, transformed back, and had an activated portal. their cover up story was that tucker only rewired something on the outside of the portal and in no way walked into the the thing. either way, needless to say jack and maddie grounded the trio (technically only danny was grounded, but the other parents were still definitely called and THEN they were grounded) it was the middle of the night though so they were at least allowed to finish their sleepover. the trio goes back up to danny’s room and basically just take their time working out that new ghost shit.

fast forwarding with ghouly’s origin story out of the way! this tucker is not really specifically based on any spiderverse character (even if some aspects of noir and ham are pulled for the “ghouly persona”) so none of those factors affect his story. if anything, how stuff plays out in his universe is probably closest to canon out of everyone else (just most of the trio roles being swapped) so theres not as much to explain.

though, i will say a lot of tucker’s lesson as a half ghost revolve a lot more around self awareness and becoming more humble, pulling back that self-centered attitude back a bit. its good to have confidence but dont let it go to your head type lessons! the way he learns to control his electricity powers play into this. while everyone else has to learn how to pull power from their core (like how canon danny needed to learn how to release his energy, even when it was building up so much to the point of becoming unbearable), tucker’s powers flowed more freely and never really needed to be taught how to unlock/tap into this ability. the lesson he needed to learn for his powers was how to reign in and control it.

as pointed out multiple times in previous asks, tucker and danny are dating in this universe! they probably got together the fastest out of everyone else with their respective romantic interest, so about half of ghouly’s “episodes/ghost career/whatever you want to call it” have them together. (tucker’s timeline isnt EXACTLY the same as in canon but for simplicity sake lets say it is) i would put their relationship being established sometime after ghouly’s version of doctor’s disorders and pirate radio or something like that. just as an estimate.

i didnt talk about sam too much in this universe even though i really wanted to and couldnt really fit it anywhere else so im tacking it on here at the end lmao. sam here is a plant nerd! where canon tucker frequently helps out with his hacking skills, this sam equips herself with a lot of natural remedies, powders, pastes, all sorts of stuff to impede ghosts. carries around her own concoction of blood blossom in a similar form of pepper spray as her main deal most likely. she also uses a lot of her plants to treat wounds as well! overall she’s just a cute little botanist nerd that could mix up some pretty dangerous poisons if she wanted to lol.

[firelxdykatara]

gods, ok, apparently i’m not done.

atla fandom? we need to have a chat.

(....ok that made me sound pretentious as fuck. and maybe i am, but this needs to be said, cause i’m getting....real, real tired of a Certain Corner of this fandom and as a result, this is gonna be a discourse-heavy post so feel free to scroll past if that’s not your bag. as always, my salt posts all carry the catch-all #salt for ts tag, which you’re free to blacklist/filter at your leisure. i’m Very Annoyed at the moment, which will probably come through in the following post, so just. yknow. be prepared for that. or ignore it, that’s perfectly valid too.)

under a cut bc i do care for my followers and their sanity i swear lmao

there’s a real serious issue in this fandom with not understanding what queer terminology actually means or implies, especially when applied to a fictional narrative.

i’m specifically talking about ‘coding’, here. (if i were in a more meme-y mood, i might have said ‘the atla fandom found out about the term “gay-coding” and haven’t shut up since’.)

to the people who say ‘zuko is gay-coded’, i have this to say: you keep using that word. i do not think it means what you think it means. because he isn’t. i’m sorry, but he’s not! and the fact that this is such a prevalent claim in this fandom is distressing, bc it says to me that none of y’all know what gay-coding is or when and how to apply it! please, i’m begging you, go and look up these terms and what they mean and when they should be used before actually trying to plug them into your critical analysis, because when you misuse them and then call other people delusional for disagreeing with you it casts a pall over the entire fandom and is, i think, the root of some of the worst toxicity this fandom has to offer.

and the thing is, there are cases where gay-coding would apply--for instance, a couple series that are famous for queerbaiting their audience by coding their main characters as being attracted to one another (sometimes even despite their openly stated sexualities) come to mind, but those shows bare no similarities at all to atla and how zuko was written and portrayed! (and it would be funny, if it weren’t so obnoxious and infuriatingly wide-spread throughout the fandom, because the only queer couple we actually seen on-screen in either show wasn’t even queer-coded in any respect, and they’re canonically bi! [yes, i’m shading korrasami, or more accurately i’m shading bryke for refusing to give ka the build-up and development they deserved].)

this absolutely isn’t to say that headcanoning zuko as gay is a bad thing or invalid in any respect. (although the tendency for zukka shippers to do this specifically to keep zuko away from katara and/or invalidate his canon relationship/attraction to girls is more than a little eyebrow raising. especially since sokka is usually allowed to be bi, bc fans have no problem letting sukka stay in the background bc it’s no real threat, while jetko shippers are happy to have both boys be bi. [possibly bc katara is less a threat to jetko bc jetkotara is every bit as valid as any single ship between the three, but zukka can’t exactly let katara join in, and if the potential exists for zuko to be attracted to her then canon giving them the far deeper emotional bond becomes a threat to zukka’s existence? idk for sure--you be the judge.]) i prefer to hc zuko as bi (and always have, long before the atla renaissance), bc i don’t think zuko being attracted to boys is outside the realm of possibility, and it isn’t a threat to my ship since zuko&katara had a deep and emotional bond in canon that is very easy to develop further into something that becomes explicitly romantic--but the headcanon itself isn’t really the problem (although what it’s often in service to can be).

it’s the strange insistence that this is the only way to read his character, bc he was coded that way and so anyone who doesn’t see it must be too straight to understand--and i really shouldn’t have to say why and how that is so incredibly fucking insulting. (the ‘hetero lenses’ comment wasn’t cute when it came from bryke six years ago, and the same sentiment being repackaged and delivered by zukka shippers ain’t cute now.)

calling zuko gay-coded not only demonstrates ignorance as to what the term actually means, and how to usefully apply it in critical analysis, but also validates the frankly bullshit insertion of institutionalized homophobia in the world of atla where it was neither needed, nor wanted, nor ever hinted at in canon. as a queer woman i’m still infuriated by one fucking comic panel shoving institutionalized and systemic homophobia into a world where it was entirely unnecessary (and doing this in the first installment of the franchise showcasing a queer relationship??? making korra and asami worried about ‘coming out’ when they could have just gone on to have cute adventures together and tell people ‘hey we’re dating’ and have everyone else be ‘that’s awesome =DDD’ [because it is, in fact, possible to just have a world without homophobia i promise!!!!!] double yikes, i’m still pissed at bryke about it), and i doubly hate that ‘zuko is gay coded’ has become so widespread that ‘ozai hates him bc he’s gay’ has become a staple in that part of the fandom.

not only does making zuko gay and implying (or outright stating) that ozai hated and abused him because of it completely undermine zuko’s character arc by making his abuse about his sexuality rather than ozai’s toxic pride and anger at seeing himself reflected in his ‘weak’ son, but it comes very close to outright stating that abuse and trauma are inherently gay experiences, and they aren’t!!! they really aren’t, i promise!!!

abuse and trauma narratives exist outside of ‘my dad hates me because i’m gay’. and, quite frankly, there are MORE THAN ENOUGH queer trauma narratives out in the world. we do not need to start trying to retroactively make them canon in a series where they didn’t exist! if you’re gay and see yourself in zuko and project your own experiences on him, that’s understandable and valid. that does not make zuko gay-coded. and honestly, the insistence that he is makes very little sense to me, because you’re essentially trying to give the show credit for work you put into interpreting the characters! why would you want to do that? why not own your own headcanons and take credit for them, rather than insisting they are canon and everyone else is wrong for not seeing them??? like, i’ve said before that i’ve always headcanoned zuko (and katara) as bi, and even support it with my interpretations of evidence from the show, but the difference between ‘i think zuko is bi’ and ‘zuko is definitely gay-coded’ is that i know that bi zuko is my interpretation of canon, and that it is work i’m putting into the show that wasn’t actually intended by the creators/writers, no matter how much sexual tension i read into the jetko swordfight.

and like, zuko’s character arc doesn’t actually parallel a queer one all that well to begin with. it’s easy enough to do the work and twist it sideways just enough to make the general points fit, but the fact is, zuko’s arc is not one of self-discovery. it’s not one of coming to understand something fundamental about himself that he can’t change, that he was hated for, and coming out to his father in a dramatic confrontation where he shows that he understands himself and doesn’t need his father’s acceptance to be fulfilled.

zuko’s arc is actually one of trauma and healing. and those can (and often are--like i said, there are more than enough queer trauma narratives in the world, atla really doesn’t need to be one of them) be part of queer narratives, for sure! but they aren’t uniquely queer. and zuko’s confrontation with ozai during the eclipse doesn’t read like a ‘coming out’ at all. (yes, i’ve seen that post. yes, i rolled my eyes and moved on, bc unlike some people, i’m capable of not clowning on correctly tagged posts i disagree with.) zuko is specifically confronting ozai over his abuse, because his arc wasn’t about discovering anything fundamental about himself (and therefore realizing that ozai was hating him for something he couldn’t change)--it was about realizing that he was not at fault for the way his father treated him. it was also about realizing that the fire nation was broken and corrupt at its core, and that his father was an aspect of that he needed to break away from so that he could help the world begin to heal.

he says it himself:

Zuko: No, I've learned everything! And I've had to learn it on my own! Growing up, we were taught that the Fire Nation was the greatest civilization in history. And somehow, the War was our way of sharing our greatness with the rest of the world. What an amazing lie that was. The people of the world are terrified by the Fire Nation. They don't see our greatness. They hate us! And we deserve it! We've created an era of fear in the world. And if we don't want the world to destroy itself, we need to replace it with an era of peace and kindness.

making this about zuko being gay and rejecting ozai’s homophobia, rather than zuko learning fundamental truths about the world and about his home and about how there was something deeply wrong with his nation that needed to be fixed in order for the world to heal (and, no, ‘homophobia’ is not the answer to ‘what is wrong with the fire nation’, i’m still fucking pissed at bryke about that), misses the entire point of his character arc. this is the culmination of zuko realizing that he should never have had to earn his father’s love, because that should have been unconditional from the start. this is zuko realizing that he was not at fault for his father’s abuse--that speaking out of turn in a war meeting in no way justified fighting a duel with a child.

is that first realization (that a parent’s love should be unconditional, and if it isn’t, then that is the parent’s fault and not the child’s) something that queer kids in homophobic households/families can relate to? of course it is. but it’s also something that every other abused kid, straight kids and even queer kids who were abused for other reasons before they even knew they were anything other than cishet, can relate to as well. in that respect, it is not a uniquely queer experience, nor is it a uniquely queer story, and zuko not being attracted to girls (which is what a lot of it seems to boil down to, at the end of the day--cutting down zuko’s potential ships so that only zukka and a few far more niche ships are left standing) is not necessary to his character arc. nor does it particularly make sense.

(and before anyone brings up his date with jin--a) he enjoyed it when she kissed him, and b) he was a traumatized, abused child going out on a first date. of course he was fucking awkward. have you ever met a teenage boy????)

anyway, uh, that was a lot of words, so have a tl;dr: zuko is not gay-coded. there is nothing uniquely gay (or even uniquely queer) about his character arc or characterization, and he was certainly not coded gay in an attempt to sneak a queer character past the censors. if anyone involved with atla was gonna try that, it would’ve been in lok, and as established, they didn’t even manage to queer-code the actual queer relationship before the last few minutes of the final episode. headcanoning zuko as gay is absolutely fine (though if it’s only done to keep him away from female characters he may otherwise be attracted to, that smells more like misogyny than anything else), but insisting that this reading is the only one that makes sense, and anyone who doesn’t agree must be straight (hello, queer woman here making this insanely long thinkpiece) is very much not.

ship what you like, but stop trying to invalidate other ships and other interpretations of characters just to make your ship seem more plausible. it’s really not a good look.

[happi-tree]

feel free 2 ignore this bestie but i need to know what's so great abt the frog show!! not in a like. derogatory way but like a what makes u like it sm!!! what r its chief appeals!! etc etc

Oh jeez, what a question!!! Like, there are so many reasons as to why I adore this show so much. Buckle up, buttercup, because this one is,,, long lmao

First off, I am an absolute sucker for fantastical interdimensional travel stories of any sort and Amphibia is a wonderful example! The world of Amphibia is just so wildly different from the main character's human-world reality in all these charming and wacky and intriguing ways, and the worldbuilding that you get to see is so clever and fun! There's also the whole quintessential "hero's journey" and all that it entails - the characters might return home eventually, but will it really register in their hearts as "home" after all they've seen and done? This trope makes for a bittersweet type of story that I just really really enjoy, and Amphibia is pulling it off beautifully.

Secondly, I adore how seriously this show takes its interpersonal dynamics. The catalyst of the entire show - what allows its events to occur in the first place - is a rather unhealthy, imbalanced, codependent friendship between three middle schoolers, and the show lets you know how off-kilter the dynamics are from practically the very beginning. However, this relationship is far from stagnant - a core (ha) theme of Amphibia is change, and it really shows in how clearly yet subtly you can see the girls' dynamics with each other shift as they learn to grow independent of one another and eventually find their way back to each other. It's messy and sometimes it feels like the characters take one step backward for every step they take forward, and that's what makes it so believable! I also really appreciate how believable they are as child characters - they don't think things through all the time and they have emotional outbursts and they see firsthand the consequences of their actions, which is just! Really nice to see! Of course, this doesn't even cover the many other relationships in the show - Anne coming into her own and learning responsibility by being thrust into suddenly becoming an older sister, the wonderfully chaotic uncle-niece relationship that is Sasha and Grime, the role model and mentor Marcy finds in Andrias, Anne being a member of not one but three families (counting Marcy and Sasha, of course) and her struggles in trying to choose between them... it's. Quite a bit.

Thirdly, the aforementioned theme of change! It's present throughout nearly every aspect of the show. The characters grow and change and build themselves into better people, not only through being thrown into circumstances but also through actively making the choice to get up and to improve. The landscape itself grows and changes alongside them, reflecting the choices that they make! Everything is in a constant state of flux and metamorphosis, and while some things are beyond the control of the characters, they learn to utilize those situations as a proponent of positive change which is just. Really neat! This show also deals a lot with letting go and with grief in general, in many, many forms. And I think that's a theme that will carry through until the final episode, if the titles are anything to go by (I am excited but I am also deeply afraid).

Also, not something I can relate to on a personal level, but that I adore about this show wholeheartedly: the Asian representation! Anne is the daughter of two Thai immigrants, and Thai influences and elements are very intentionally and lovingly baked into the core of the show. As someone who had little to no exposure to Thai culture beforehand, it was wonderful to see! Marcy is also confirmed to be Taiwanese, and while there aren't many nods to Taiwanese culture (that I could parse out, at least), it's absolutely lovely to see that 2/3 of our human protagonists are POC! There's this great line from Anne where she says that she could understand what her parents went through adjusting to life in the States now that she's experienced the culture shock of being treated as an outsider in Amphibia, and it just. It lives rent-free in my brain. And, without going into spoiler territory, there's also an interesting narrative dealing with colonialism, and if the show is going where I think it is,,, yeah. Yeah.

Shoutout as well to the music (Anne's theme can and has made me cry), the design of all the different environments in both worlds, the balancing of humor with heavier themes, the use of symbolism (which could be a whole essay on its own), the constant use of the rule of three, and the animation itself (blue moments my absolute beloveds!).

Well, this was very long-winded, but hopefully it suffices! As you can tell this show has been taking up quite a bit of my cognitive ability atm haha.

[yamayuandadu]

The Two (or more) Ishtars or A Certain Scandalous Easter Claim Proved to be The Worship of Reverend Alexander Hislop

Once upon a time the official facebook page of Richard Dawkins' foundation posted a graphic according to which the holiday of Easter is just a rebranded celebration of the Mesopotamian mythology superstar Ishtar, arguing that the evidence is contained in its very name. As everyone knows, Dawkins is an online talking head notable for discussing his non-belief in such an euphoric way that it might turn off even the most staunch secularists and for appearing in some reasonably funny memes about half a decade ago. Bizarrely enough, however, the same claim can be often found among the crowds dedicated to crystal healing, Robert Graves' mythology fanfiction, indigo children and similar dubiously esoteric content. What's yet more surprising is that once in a while it shows up among a certain subset of fundamentalist Christians, chiefly the types who believe giants are real (and, of course, satanic), the world  is ruled by a secret group of Moloch worshipers and fossils were planted by the devil to led the sheeple astray from the truth about earth being 6000 years old, tops. Of course, to anyone even just vaguely familiar with Christianity whose primary language isn't English this claim rightfully seems completely baffling – after all it's evident in most languages that the name of the holiday celebrating Jesus' resurrection, and many associated customs, are derived from the earlier Jewish Pascha (Passover) which has nothing to do with Ishtar other than having its origin in the Middle East. Why would the purported association only be evident  in English and not in Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Spanish, virtually any language other than English and its close relatives – languages which generally didn't have anything to do with Mesopotamia or early christianity? Read on to find out what sort of sources let this eclectic selection of characters arrive to the same baffling conclusion, why are they hilariously wrong, and – most importantly – where you can actually find a variety of Ishtars (or at least reasonably Ishtar-like figures) under different names instead.

The story of baffling Easter claims begins in Scotland in the 19th century. A core activity of theologians in many faiths through history was (and sometimes still is) finding alleged proof of purported “idolatry” or other “impure” practices among ideological opponents, even these from within the same religion – and a certain Presbyterian minister, Alexander Hislop, was no stranger to this traditional pastime. Like many Protestants in this period, he had an axe to grind with the catholic church  - though not for the reasons many people are not particularly fond of this institution nowadays. What Hislop wanted to prove was much more esoteric – he believed that it's the Babylon known from the Book of Revelations. Complete with the beast with seven heads, blasphemous names and other such paraphernalia, of course. This wasn't a new claim – catholicism was equated with the New Testament Babylon for as long as Protestantism was a thing (and earlier catholicism itself regarded other religions as representing it). What set Hislop apart from dozens of other similar attempts like that was that he fancied himself a scholar of history and relied on the brand new accounts of excavations in what was once the core sphere of influence of the Assyrian empire (present day Iraq and Syria), supplemented by various Greek and Roman classics – though also by his own ideas, generally varying from baseless to completely unhinged. Hislop compiled his claims in the book The Two Babylons or The Papal Worship Proved to be the Worship of Nimrod and His Wife. You can find it on archive.org if you want to torment yourself and read the entire thing – please do not give clicks directly to any fundie sites hosting it though. How does the history of Easter and Ishtar look like according to Hislop? Everything started with Semiramis, who according to his vision was a historical figure and a contemporary of Noah's sons, here also entirely historical. Semiramis is either entirely fictional or a distorted Greek and Roman account of the 9th century BC Assyrian queen Shammuramat, who ruled as a regent for a few years after the death of her husband Shamshi Adad V – an interesting piece of historical trivia, but arguably not really a historical milestone, and by the standards of Mesopotamian history she's hardly a truly ancient figure. Hislop didn't even rely on the primary sources dealing with the legend of Semiramis though, but with their medieval christian interpretations, which cast her in the role of an adulterer first and foremost due to association of ancient Mesopotamia with any and all vices.

Hislop claims that Semiramis was both the Whore of Babylon from the Book of Revelations and the first idolater, instituting worship of herself as a goddess. This goddess, he argues, was Astarte (a combination of two flimsy claims – Roman claim that Semiramis' name means “dove” and now generally distrusted assumption that Phoenician Astarte had the same symbols as Greek Aphrodite) and thus Ishtar, but he also denotes her as a mother goddess – which goes against everything modern research has to say about Ishtar, of course. However, shoddy scholarship relying on few sources was the norm at the time, and Hislop on top of that was driven by religious zeal. In further passages, he identified this “universal mother” with Phrygian Cybele, Greek Rhea and Athena, Egyptian Isis, Taoist Xi Wangmu (sic) and many more, pretty much at random, arguing all of them were aspects of nefarious Semiramis cult which infected all corners of the globe. He believed that she was venerated alongside a son-consort, derived from Semiramis' even more fictional husband Ninus (a mythical founder of Assyria according to Greek authors, absent from any Mesopotamian sources; his name was derived from Nineveh, not from any word for son like Hislop claims), who he identifies with biblical Nimrod (likewise not a historical figure, probably a distorted reflection of the god Ninurta). Note the similarity with certain ideas perpetrated by Frazer's Golden Bough and his later fans like Jung, Graves and many neopagan authors – pseudohistory, regardless of ideological background, has a very small canon of genuinely original claims. Ishtar was finally introduced to Britain by “druids” (note once again the similarity to the baffling integration of random Greek, Egyptian or Mesopotamian deities into Graves-derived systems of fraudulent trivia about “universal mother goddesses” often using an inaccurate version of Celtic myths as framework). This eventually lead to the creation of the holiday of Easter. Pascha doesn't come up in the book at all, as far as I can tell. All of this is basically just buildup for the book's core shocking reveal: catholic veneration of Mary and depictions of Mary with infant Jesus in particular are actually the worship of Semiramis and her son-consort Ninus, and only the truly faithful can reveal this evil purpose of religious art. At least so claims Hislop. This bizarre idea is laughable, but it remains disturbingly persistent – do you remember the Chick Tracts memes from a few years ago, for example? These comics were in part inspired by Hislop's work. Many fundamentalist christian communities appear to hold his confabulations in high esteem up to this day – and many people who by design see themselves as a countercultural opposition to christianity independently gleefully embrace them, seemingly ignorant of their origin. While there are many articles debunking Hislop's claim about Easter, few of them try to show how truly incomprehensibly bad his book is as a whole – hopefully the following examples will be sufficient to illustrate this point: -Zoroaster is connected to Moloch because of the Zoroastrian holy fire - and Moloch is, of course Ninus. Note that while a few Greek authors believed Zoroaster to be the “king of Bactria” mythical accounts presented as a contemporary of Ninus, the two were regarded as enemies – Hislop doesn't even follow the pseudohistory he uses as proof! -Zoroaster is also Tammuz. Tammuz is, of course, yet another aspect of Ninus. -demonic character is ascribed to relics of the historical Buddha; also he's Osiris. And Ninus. -an incredibly racist passage explains why the biblical Nimrod (identified with – you guessed it - Ninus) might be regarded as “ugly and deformed” like Haephestus and thus identical to him (no, it makes no sense in context either) - Hislop thinks he was black (that's not the word he uses, naturally) which to him is the same thing. -Attis is a deification of sin itself -the pope represents Dagon (incorrectly interpreted as a fish god in the 19th century) -Baal and Bel are two unrelated words – this is meant to justify the historicity of the Tower of Babel by asserting it was built by Ninus, who was identical to Bel (in reality a title of Marduk); Bel, according to Hislop, means “the confounder (of languages)” rather than “lord” -the term “cannibal” comes from a made up term for priests of Baal (Ninus) who according to Hislop ate children. In reality it's a Spanish corruption of the endonym of one of the first tribes encountered by the Spanish conquerors in America, and was not a word used in antiquity – also, as I discussed in my Baal post, the worship of Baal did not involve cannibalism. This specific claim of Hislop's is popular with the adherents of prophetic doomsday cult slash wannabe terrorist group QAnon today, and shows up on their “redpilling” graphics. -Ninus was also Cronos; Cronos' name therefore meant “horned one” in reference to Mesopotamian bull/horned crown iconography and many superficially similar gods from all over the world were the same as him - note the similarity to Margaret Murray's obsession with her made up idea of worldwide worship of a “horned god” (later incorporated into Wicca). -Phaeton, Orpheus and Aesculapius are the same figure and analogous to Lucifer (and in turn to Ninus) -giants are real and they're satanists (or were, I think Hislop argues they're dead already). They are (were?) also servants of Ninus. -as an all around charming individual Hislop made sure to include a plethora of comments decrying the practices of various groups at random as digressions while presenting his ridiculous theories – so, while learning about the forbidden history of Easter, one can also learn why the author thinks Yezidi are satanists, for example -last but not least, the very sign of the cross is not truly christian but constitutes the worship of Tammuz, aka Ninus (slowly losing track of how many figures were regarded as one and the same as him by Hislop). Based on the summary above it's safe to say that Hislop's claim is incorrect – and, arguably, malevolent (and as such deserves scrutiny, not further possibilities for spreading). However, this doesn't answer the question where does the name of Easter actually come from? As I noted in the beginning, in English (and also German) it's a bit of an oddity – it  actually was derived from a preexisting pagan term, at least if we are to believe the word of the monk Bede, who in the 8th century wrote that the term is a derivative of “Eosturmonath,” eg. “month of Eostre” - according to him a goddess. There are no known inscriptions mentioning such a goddess from the British Isles or beyond, though researchers involved in reconstructing proto-indo-european language assume that “Eostre” would logically be a derivative of the same term as  the name of the Greek Eos and of the vedic Ushas, and the Austriahenae goddesses from Roman inscriptions from present day Germany  – eg.  a word simply referring to dawn, and by extension to a goddess embodying it. This is a sound, well researched theory, so while early medieval chroniclers sometimes cannot be trusted, I see no reason to doubt Bede's account.

While Ushas is a prominent goddess in the Vedas, Eos was rather marginal in Greek religion (see her Theoi entry for details), and it's hard to tell to what degree Bede's Eostre was similar to either of them beyond plausibly being a personification of dawn. Of course, the hypothetical proto-indo-european dawn goddess all of these could be derived from would have next to nothing to do with Ishtar. While the history of the name of Easter (though not the celebration itself) is undeniably interesting, I suppose it lacks the elements which make the fake Ishtar claim a viral hit – the connection is indirect, and an equivalent of the Greek Eos isn't exactly exciting (Eos herself is, let be honest, remembered at best as an obscure part of the Odyssey), while Ishtar is understood by many as “wicked” sex goddess (a simplification, to put it very lightly) which adds a scandalous, sacrilegious dimension to the baffling lie, explaining its appeal to Dawkins' fans, arguably. As demonstrated above, Hislop's theories are false and adapting them for any new context – be it christian, atheist or neopagan – won't change that, but are there any genuine examples of, well, “hidden Ishtars”? If that's the part of the summary which caught your attention, rejoice – there is a plenty of these to be found in Bronze Age texts. I'd go as far as saying that most of ancient middle eastern cultures from that era felt compelled to include an Ishtar ersatz in their pantheons. Due to the popularity of the original Ishtar, she was almost a class of figures rather than a single figure – a situation almost comparable to modern franchising, when you think about it. The following figures can be undeniably regarded as “Ishtar-like” in some capacity or even as outright analogs:

Astarte (or Ashtart, to go with a more accurate transcription of the oldest recorded version of the name) – the most direct counterpart of Ishtar there is: a cognate of her own name. Simply, put Astarte is the “Levantine”equivalent of the “Mesopotamian” Ishtar. In the city of Mari, the names were pretty much used interchangeably, and some god lists equate them, though Astarte had a fair share of distinct traits. In Ugaritic mythology, which forms the core of our understanding of the western Semitic deities, she was a warrior and hunter (though it's possible that in addition to conventional weapons she was also skilled at wielding curses), and was usually grouped with Anat. Both of them were regarded as the allies of Baal, and assist him against his enemies in various myth. They also were envisioned to spend a lot of time together – one ritual calls them upon as a pair from distant lands where they're hunting together, while a fragmentary myth depicts both of them arriving in the household of the head god El and taking pity on Yarikh, the moon god, seemingly treated as a pariah. Astarte's close relation to Baal is illustrated by her epithet, “face of Baal” or “of the name of Baal.” They were often regarde as a couple and even late, Hellenic sources preserve a traditional belief that Astarte and “Adados” (Baal) ruled together as a pair. In some documents from Ugarit concerned with what we would call foreign policy today they were invoked together as the most prominent deities. It's therefore possible that she had some role related to human politics. She was regarded as exceptionally beautiful and some texts favorably describe mortal women's appearance by comparing them to Astarte. In later times she was regarded as a goddess of love, but it's unclear if that was a significant aspect of her in the Bronze Age. It's equally unclear if she shared Ishtar's astral character – in Canaan there were seemingly entirely separate dawn and dusk deities. Despite clamis you might see online, Astarte was not the same as the mother goddess Asherah. In the Baal cycle they actually belong to the opposing camps. Additionally, the names are only superficially similar (one starts with an aleph, the other with an ayin) and have different etymology. Also, that famous sculpture of a very blatantly Minoan potnia theron? Ugaritic in origin but not a depiction of either Astarte or Asherah.

The Egyptians, due to extensive contact with Canaan and various Syrian states in the second half of the Bronze Age, adapted Astarte (and by extension Anat) into their own pantheon. Like in Ugarit, her warrior character was emphasized. An Egyptian innovation was depicting her as a cavalry goddess of sorts – associated with mounted combat and chariots. In Egypt, Ptah, the head god of Memphis and divine craftsman, was regarded as her father. In most texts, Astarte is part of Seth's inner circle of associates – however, in this context Seth wasn't the slayer of Osiris, but a heroic storm god similar to Baal. The so-called Astarte papyrus presents an account of a myth eerily similar to the Ugaritic battle between Baal and Yam – starring Seth as the hero, with Astarte in a supporting role resembling that played by Shaushka, another Ishtar analog, in the Hittite song of Hedammu, which will be discussed below.

Shaushka – a Hurrian and Hittite goddess whose name means “the magnificent one” in the Hurrian language. Hurrian was widely spoken in ancient Mesopotamia and Anatolia (and in northernmost parts of the Levant – up to one fifth of personal names from Ugaritic documents were Hurrian iirc), but has no descendants today and its relation to any extant languages is uncertain. In Hittite texts she was often referred to with an “akkadogram” denoting Ishtar's name (or its Sumerian equivalent) instead of a phonetic  spelling of her own (there was an analogous practice regarding the sun gods), while in Egyptian and Syrian texts there are a few references to “Ishtar Hurri” - “Ishtar of the Hurrians” - who is argued by researchers to be one and the same as Shaushka. Despite Shaushka's Hurrian name and her prominence in myths popular both among Hittites and Hurrians, her main cult center was the Assyrian city of Nineveh, associated with Ishtar herself as well, and there were relatively few temples dedicated to her in the core Hittite sphere of influence in Anatolia. Curiously, both the oldest reference to Shaushka and to the city of Nineveh come from the same text, stating that a sheep was sacrificed to her there. While most of her roles overlap with Ishtar's (she too was associated with sex, warfare and fertility), here are two distinct features of Shaushka that set her apart as unique: one is the fact she was perceived in part as a masculine deity, despite being consistently described as a woman – in the famous Yazılıkaya reliefs she appears twice, both among gods and goddesses. In Alalakh she was depicted in outfits combining elements of male and female clothing. Similar fashion preferences were at times attributed to Ninshubur, the attendant of Ishtar's Sumerian forerunner Inanna – though in that case they were likely the result of conflation of Ninshubur with the male messenger deity Papsukkal, while in the case of Shaushka the dual nature seems to be inherent to her (I haven't seen any in depth study of this matter yet, sadly, so I can't really tell confidently which modern term in my opinion describes Shaushka's character the best). Her two attendants, musician goddesses Ninatta and Kulitta, do not share it. Shaushka's other unique niche is her role in exorcisms and incantations, and by extension with curing various diseases – this role outlived her cult itself, as late Assyrian inscriptions still associated the “Ishtar of Nineveh” (at times viewed as separate from the regular Ishtar) with healing. It can be argued that even her sexual aspect was connected to healing, as she was invoked to cure impotence. The most significant myth in which she appears is the cycle dedicated to documenting the storm god's (Teshub for the Hurrians, Tarhunna for the Hittites) rise to power. Shaushka is depicted as his sister and arguably most reliable ally, and plays a prominent role in two sections in particular – the Song of Hedammu and the Song of Ullikummi. In the former, she seemingly comes up with an elaborate plan to defeat a new enemy of her brother - the sea monster Hedammu - by performing a seductive dance and song montage (with her attendants as a support act) and offering an elixir to him. The exact result is uncertain, but Hedammu evidently ends up vanquished. In the latter, she attempts to use the same gambit against yet another new foe, the “diorite man” Ullikummi – however, since he is unfeeling like a rock, she fails; some translators see this passage as comedic. However, elsewhere in the Song, the storm god's main enemy Kumarbi and his minions view Shaushka as a formidable warrior, and in the early installment of the cycle, Song of LAMMA, she seemingly partakes in a fight. In another myth, known only from a few fragments and compared to the Sumerian text “Inanna and the huluppu tree,” Shaushka takes care of “Ḫašarri” -  a personification of olive oil, or a sentient olive tree. It seems that she has to protect this bizarre entity from various threats. While Shaushka lived on in Mesopotamia as “Ishtar of Nineveh,” this was far from the only “variant”of Ishtar in her homeland.

Nanaya was another such goddess. A few Sumerian hymns mention her alongside Inanna, the Sumerian equivalent of Ishtar, by the time of Sargon of Akkad virtually impossible to separate from her. As one composition puts it, Nanaya was “properly educated by holy Inana” and “counselled by holy Inana.” Initially she was most likely a part of Inanna's circle of deities in her cult center, Uruk, though due to shared character they eventually blurred together to a large degree. Just like Inanna/Ishtar, Nanaya was a goddess of love, described as beautiful and romantically and sexually active, and she too had an astral character. She was even celebrated during the same holidays as Inanna. Some researchers go as far as suggest Nanaya was only ever Inanna/Ishtar in her astral aspect alone and not a separate goddess. However, there is also evidence of her, Inanna and the sky god An being regarded as a trinity of distinct tutelary deities in Uruk. Additionally, king Melishipak's kudurru shown above shows both Nanaya (seated) and Ishtar/Inanna (as a star). Something peculiar to Nanaya was her later association with the scribe god Nabu. Sometimes Nabu's consort was the the goddess Tashmetu instead, but I can't find any summary explaining potential differences between them – it seems just like Nanaya, she was a goddess of love, including its physical aspects. Regardless of the name used to describe Nabu's wife, she was regarded as a sage and scribe like him – this arguably gives her a distinct identity she lacked in her early role as part of Inanna's circle. As the above examples demonstrate, the popularity of the “Ishtar type” was exceptional in the Bronze Age – but is it odd from a modern perspective? The myths dedicated to her are still quite fun to read today – much like any hero of ancient imagination she has a plethora of adversaries, a complex love life (not to mention many figures not intended to be read as her lovers originally but described in such terms that it's easy to see them this way today – including other women), a penchant for reckless behavior – and most importantly a consistent, easy to summarize character. She shouldn't be a part of modern mass consciousness only because of false 19th century claims detached from her actual character (both these from Hislop's works and “secular”claims about her purported “real”character based on flimsy reasoning and shoddy sources) – isn't a female character who is allowed to act about the same way as male mythical figures do without being condemned for it pretty much what many modern mythology retellings try to create? Further reading: On Astarte: -entry in the Iconography of Deities and Demons in Ancient Near East database by Izak Cornelius -‛Athtart in Late Bronze Age Syrian Texts by Mark S. Smith -ʿAthtartu’s Incantations and the Use of Divine Names as Weapons by Theodore J. Lewis -The Other Version of the Story of the Storm-god’s Combat with the Sea in the Light of Egyptian, Ugaritic, and Hurro-Hittite Texts by Noga Ayali-Darshan -for a summary of evidence that Astarte has nothing to do with Asherah see A Reassessment of Asherah With Further Considerations of the Goddess by Steve A. Wiggins On Shaushka: -Adapting Mesopotamian Myth in Hurro-Hittite Rituals at Hattuša: IŠTAR, the Underworld, and the Legendary Kings by Mary R. Bacharova -Ishtar seduces the Sea-serpent. A new join in the epic of Ḫedammu (KUB 36, 56 + 95) and its meaning for the battle between Baal and Yam in Ugaritic tradition by Meindert Dijkstra -Ištar of Nineveh Reconsidered by Gary Beckman -Shaushka, the Traveling Goddess by Graciela Gestoso Singer -Hittite Myths by Harry A. Hoffner jr. -The Hurritic Myth about Šaušga of Nineveh and Ḫašarri (CTH 776.2) by Meindert Dijkstra -The West Hurian Pantheon and its Background by Alfonso Archi On Nanaya: -entry in Brill’s New Pauly by Thomas Richter -entry from the Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses project by Ruth Horry -A tigi to Nanaya for Ishbi-Erra from The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature -A balbale to Inana as Nanaya from The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature -More Light on Nanaya by Michael P. Streck and Nathan Wasserman -More on the Nature and History of the Goddess Nanaya by Piotr Steinkeller A few introductory Ishtar/Inanna myths: -Inanna's descent to the netherworld -Inanna and the huluppu tree -Inanna and Enki -Enki and the world order -Inanna and Ebih -Dumuzid and Enkimdu

[ratsoupee]

Things I Would’ve Loved To See In A Danny Phantom Reboot

I’m a big enthusiast when it comes to storytelling, and Danny Phantom literally has so much potential. And I’m very upset Butch was too coward to go darker. So here are my thoughts on if DP had a reboot:

Deeper ghost lore and kinds of ghost, A lot of fanfiction I have come across have so many versions of lore that all totally make sense and are supper cool (e.g. Ghost core types, states of ghosts, the idea of ghosts being ghosts, ghosts’ obsession). Ghosts that wreak havoc upon Amity Park because they are so filled with rage and need to be contained and put back in the ghost zone. Ghosts that, despite having moved on from their past, stay because they want to see the next Cowboys vs Aliens 3 movie happen and only cause trouble for the fun of it (exhibit A, Johnny). 

Spookier ghosts, just give us way meaner ghosts! Ghosts that have eyeballs hanging out! You can’t just give us funky ghosts and funky ghosts only. From the physically gore-ish to the psychologically horrifying ghosts (Like Penelope Spectra!), I would have loved to see these kind of ghosts and episodes.

Different cultural interpretations of ghosts. Of course, done respectfully, with deep research and understanding of said culture. So many cultures touch on the spiritual aspect of ghosts and spirits. It makes for incredible stories and ideas.

Danny Phantom being Trans, need I say more? (Butch Hartman can suck a dick)

Danny Phantom with much more unique, mysterious powers, he’s a Halfa, of course he’s a mystery, a phantom! While other ghosts have powers solely linked to an obsession or something they relate to closely, Danny doesn’t have that. He’s a mystery. I want seasons of Danny exploring and discovering powers he doesn’t have the means of understanding or controlling because it’s just that bizarre and one of a kind. Maybe he can tap into the memories of ghosts when they are extremely emotional, something about having the human connection?

Hilarious quirks about being a half ghost, like Danny showing up in photos looking like a cryptic entity, being super silent, scaring the shit out of people. Fun ghost stuff.

The bullies need to have their character development moments!! They had so much potential for character growth and exploration. Topics like toxic masculinity, abuse and bullying could’ve been explored through them! GIVE THEM THE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT THEY DESERVED

The friendship between Tucker, Sam and Danny being tested in the form of their own self reflection. People have also written good fanfiction about it, and the one I love the most is when Sam is being questioned about being friends with Tucker and Danny because of her favoritism towards unconventional-ism to spite her parents (Of course, Sam loves her friends with a passion). Or maybe when Danny has had a tough day (i.e getting found out by his parents and just showing up to Tucker’s home) and the two have no idea what to do, but in the end, they just needed to be there for Danny and likewise. Friendships like relationships are complicated. I would love to see these things being explored.

Danny’s ghost powers becoming a little more unpredictable in the later season. In relation to the earlier comment about ghosts obsession, ghosts can also become powerful with fickle emotion, especially aggression. Danny has always tiptoed the line of human and ghost, but when he gets too angry in a particular episode, he goes absolutely feral, intense ghost form and stuff. It’s a new thing he has to struggle with and it even makes him fear becoming ghost.

More Danny and Jazz moments, because siblings need so much screen time to annoy each other. But also, I would love moments where Jazz has Danny’s back and sometimes, covers up Danny’s disappearances in front of their parents with humorous excuses.

Danny’s secret is revealed to his parents in an unfavorable situation, and his parents struggle to accept and understand Danny’s revelation. Jack and Maddie have spent their whole lives thinking ghosts are bad, and the only way to solve a ghost problem is to shoot at it. With Danny, its a whole ‘nother stack of cards to deal with. From the fact that their son is no longer human, throwing a wrench into everything they know about ghosts, to holy shit, we actually killed our son. Maddie especially finds it harder to accept, believing that they need to help Danny get rid of his ghostly half, even if it meant destroying his core. But Danny doesn’t need help, he’s long accepted that he’s Halfa. Slowly, the Jack and Maddie learn to accept it, and a comically unsure about their jobs as ghost hunters.

Hey that movie about Planet something, never existed. Saving a planet from an asteroid is suppose to be the peak finale of Danny’s reveal to Amity Park as a half human half ghost?? Get outta here

Instead, let’s have a season finale of an epic ghost showdown that even Danny himself, will struggle terribly to defeat. He has to face off against a ghost that even with the help of his friends and his ghost powers, seems almost impossible. Even the ghosts of Amity Park are threatened if they ever get in their way of world domination, and they don’t hesitate to crush the cores of the ghosts. Its a culmination of the past relationships he has made with the ghosts, friends, family, allies, and even nemesis, working together to stop an ultimate evil. Because when he first faces off the ghost, he’s alone, and in their final showdown, he has people who will stick with him thick and thin. With everything he has learnt, struggled to control, and mastered his ghost powers, there is an epic showdown.

Trust me, I have so many ideas for the season finale showdown in my head. The ghost having the power to just grab and destroy a core, or control it. They have their ghost armada and they enjoy playing mind games, torment any poor soul who dares get in her way. Danny Phantom attempts to stop her in the ghost zone before she can enter the human world, but he gets absolutely destroyed, almost having his core taken from it and you can bet that shit will hurt like hell. He gets trapped in the ghost zone, too weak to make it back to the human world and alone, until Vlad of all ghosts, manages to fish him out of the ghost zone and Danny finds that the humans and ghosts have taken refuge from the big Ghost boss. 

As much as I dislike Butch Hartman and his homophobic cowardly ass, make no mistake that he pioneered a generation of cartoon and art. He made a style uniquely distinct that even artists reference when it comes to character design. But his stories have so much potential that we can’t shy away from. We need more mature themes for kids to learn, more openly LGBTQ+ friendly episodes and of course, more diverse characters and cast.

Feel free to add more! There’s just so many ideas for a DP reboot, and they really are amazing

[imdreaminadream]

The results pt 2 ~ what about it makes you cringe?” Category 3

( - prologue.   - part 1  - category 1  - category 2 )

Okay so this is the results to the question in the quiz, What about it makes you cringe. In reference to the questionnaires core subject about smut fanfics.

Also quick psa there will be a part for the results for the other question -  “In kpop fics, Korean words i.e. jagiya, seem to be a no no, would you like to elaborate why?”

Now note these particular results are going to be split into 3 posts because I decided to split the results into 3 categories. 1 - Writing Aspects. 2 -  Personal Preferences. 3 - Genuine Problems.   >This post is category 3<

TRIGGER WARNINGS FOR MENTIONS OF - rape, minors engaging in sex, child pornography, childhood trauma, unsafe bdsm/kinky sex, misogyny?, toxic masculinity? anything else that needs to be tagged message me so I can add them.

DISCLAIMER BELOW. (please read that before continuing)

This is going to be a long post. The responses were very enlightening but please don’t take this as an attack. Consider this more as constructive cheat sheet to good smut writing or just ignore it if you don’t agree with it. Some of this did a bit deep apricate trigger warnings will be put on the appropriate posts but I’m not sorry it got deep fics can also affect real life as much as we wish it were something that didn’t mix in with real life, it does. I’m no official like sex guru or big-time writer, or what ever BUT I did add little advice underneath each answer, which are just a reflection of the people’s answers. Again if you don’t like the sounds of this don’t take it personal and click off.

Genuine problems

Rape territory - There was a common theme of people commenting about what is essentially edging into rape territory. This was talked about with both sexes, where one expresses, they’re not in the mood but the other just continues to make advances on them until they end up having sex. Everyone who spoke about it mentioned it comes across as coercive or forceful (which would be dubious consent, but I personally know how no one tags it as that because they don’t realize.) something that makes them immediately stop reading and knocks an author’s credit in their eyes. When a character is crying as though they’re not enjoying it, but the sex doesn’t stop and there is not safe word that is used.

No advice for this just use common sense.

Lack of tags which indicate trigger/content warnings - This only came up a handful of times but considering its importance I added it in here to talk about. The comments about it were straight forward as is the topic. Some authors aren’t tagging their work appropriately and it’s actually quite dangerous. You tag your work for a reason to let people know what is involved in it before they read, tagging everything is crucial. If something isn’t tagged you risk the reader, at the very least, the reading but then feeling discontent because it had something in they don’t like to read. Then at the worst you risk people’s mental health, you risk them having panic attacks, anxiety attacks because their trigger was in your fic but they didn’t know because it wasn’t tagged for them to see and know not to read because it could trigger them.

Advice for this is to bold things which you know for sure are sensitive topics, and make sure to tag everything in your damn fucking tag section. You risk people having panic attacks when you don’t tag your work right and they read your work only to find out it has their trigger included in it being blindsided because after reading your shitty tags they didn’t know but you put it in there. Also please don’t just tag smut, tag everything included in that smut because something works are tagged smut and then next thing you know person b is being choked, clothes cut by a knife, restrained with rope, told they’re a slut/whore.

They’re a minor - This also only came up a handful of times, not because people don’t care but probably because they don’t commonly come across it enough however this is incredibly important topic even outside of what about smut makes you cringe. This shouldn’t be a problem, as in it shouldn’t be happening as the people who commented, me and all of you know. They’re a minor, under 18, they’re technically still considered child in the law’s eyes anything sexual about them, like writing smut about them would be considered child pornography. “Things that persons under 18 are prohibited from doing - being depicted in pornographic materials.” No one even cares about “but I’m the same age as them uwu.” It still doesn’t make it right so don’t try and use excuses. Also, the minute a person turns 18 if your first thought is oh, I can write smut about them or request someone to write it for me please just leave that’s like preying on them as though you counted down till they were 18 and now the only value you see in them is for sex.

Mine and everyone else’s advice DON’T FUCKING DO IT.

Also, to note I don’t know what the official rules are for age swapping so like writing an adult person as a minor and depicting them in smut materials, to cope with your trauma, would anyone be open to talking to me about it, like educating me? There has just been this sudden wave more fics being, it’s okay to write adult that I made a child in my fic engaging in sexual content because it helps me cope with my trauma. It just seems everyone’s started saying that and I don’t know how many are being genuine or using it as an excuse or gone with the flow treated it like a trend. Not to be rude just genuinely how legit is this? How many people who write it have genuinely experienced that trauma? P.s if you have experienced that trauma, I am genuinely so sorry and know I am not disrespecting or invalidating your trauma I promise.

Female Characters/misogyny? - Now what this means is everyone expressed how they hate the constant portrayal that it only takes seconds for a female to reach an orgasm and she already wet to go like some kind of tap. They also highlighted a big problem with constantly painting the female as this innocent, dainty, dumb, naïve, shy, small, little girl. Women have brains too; women can give as good as they get and aren’t these shy naïve little playthings. All women have different personalities, the stereotypes about women in fics I’ve seen through the answers, and myself in fics, to my questionnaire is upsetting everyone. And you can see why, is it not bad enough we are subjected to misogyny and stereotyped in real life but now we have to see it in fics too. It genuinely does make people stop reading, it makes them cringe as the answers have suggested. One person mentioned this in their response, and I feel it should also be included, “y/n is absolutely okay with everything being done to her.” This isn’t something we should ever hear. This category feels like the right category to mention it so just consider their words, consider why that makes them cringe at smut writing that includes that.

To everyone the advice is a no brainer when you look at the responses. Make sure that the female character is actually getting turned on like into the mood before even thinking about mentioning that she is wet. And consider that a lot of statistics and personal experiences of other women stating it’s not all that easy to orgasm during sex, and not typical for her to come before the male, so make it sound like it’s worth the female characters while not that they do it for 3 minutes and suddenly she is coming.

Please also STOP with the constant bullshit of stereotyping of women as exampled above. If you like to feel small or submissive or whatever in the bedroom and you express that in your fics I get you but that does not mean you have to portray the female character as dumb, naïve, small, weak like for the love of god spice it up a bit, make her powerful, clever, with personality etc.… being in charge of her own body, knowing about her body, and what she wants and how to get it.

Btw no one is saying it’s not okay to be shy and that before you come in here like “why are you shaming shy, or small girls or dd/lg kink,” it’s not that I can assure you. We’re talking about the stereotype of it that is used to make the women seem more pliable for the man to control essentially not the genuine personalities/kinks people have.

Very passive sub female reader and overly dom male - Now many people spoke how an over macho dom male, and a passive - made out like they’re dumb, submissive female is a dynamic that is making them cringe now. It’s not a dynamic they care for anymore, and I agree with them especially considering the issues it brings about. “ Whenever the female reader is extremely passive and shy/flustered whereas the idol/character is extremely assertive/condescending/dominating/leading everything in comparison.” There is a personal preference to this yes# people acknowledged this, however when talking about this dynamic they further explained the issues with it. Overly passive female has already been touched on but to reiterate the replies insinuated they’re sick of seeing women in fics treated how they are in real life essentially – like some dumb little girl. One person said, “I like when the girl can give as good as she gets, though that’s just my preference.” So, like what has been discussed before this portrayal of females it absolute bullshit and needs to fucking stop being such a constant portrayal. (mind break is different so don’t start)

Then for the male side of things it’s enforcing the stereotype men are macho an alpha male, they don’t have feelings they just think with their dick and have all grr I’m super toxically manly do you ever lift bro, I’m so strong, I get all the bitches, fuck all the girls, the have control over the passive female and not in a consenting way, in an entitled way. Which no, they can have feelings, they can be softer more feminine all whilst still identifying as a man. They can be submissive just as much as a anyone else, they can be a switch or just a dom that isn’t this macho, macho, man. They can be needy, loving, caring, in touch with themselves, their feelings and everything the female character is made out to be, apart from dumb, naïve and weak of course, yano all those negative things any gender and non-gender people want to be associated with. If the guy wants to get railed by the female and be the sub in the dynamic of male x female, then fair enough let it happen there isn’t nothing wrong with it.

All in all, it’s okay for males to be more feminine than masculine and females more masculine than feminine. It’s okay to portray that in fics genuinely. I wouldn’t say I have any advice for this other than the obvious no more macho man and passive females.

Use of Korean words. - If you’re not a Korean person don’t think you’re in the right to argue about this. The Korean people have spoken up and you will listen and respect them. Know this is an important topic, however there will be a separate post for this, so I’ll keep this bit short to then expand on more in the separate post. Just wanted to make you the reader aware that this is an issue.  It’s not okay to be treating noona, unnie and oppa like a kink if you are not Korean, or have Korean heritage. The people who are Korean so kindly explained, it was a normal word for them like just another part of their culture until bad egg kpop fans got their hands on it and they have now sexualized it to the point where some Korean people do not feel comfortable to even use it without thinking of the sexual connotation it has now been given. 

Now like I said I will talk further about that and more, to do with the use of Korean words in fics, in another post, I don’t already have that post drafted so it might take a while to get out and post. However in that time I’m gladly open to hearing more people who are Korean and have Korean heritage, views on this. Or if you too have experience with a word from your language having been taken from being an innocent word to now having a sexual connotation as well because of people not from your country/culture having given it that sexual meaning. It could be helpful to further emphasis the point about the Korean words but also show overall no matter the language/country that it’s making the people of that country/culture uncomfortable. 

Also I hope it doesn’t come across like I’m trying to speak over Koreans. If anything i want to be helpful more than a hinderance. This was something that was spoken about on the questionnaire so I’m just writing what the Korean people have expressed about it in the questionnaire. I want to be able to give their voices from the questionnaire a platform and shed light on this situation, with them.

Also can I ask if gender is a factor in this as well? I’ve seen on tiktok where some Korean guys like being called oppa but I’m not sure if that's in a respectful light or a sexual light, if they were being sarcastic for the Korea-boos or? but i have never seen women say they like being called noona in a way that comes across as a turn on? So can anyone comment on that? send me anons pls.

Too much degradation - Of course everyone who has mentioned this has said it is quite a personal preference thing, the acknowledge that it’s a kink not for everyone. Although on the flip side them relentlessly mentioning it give the feel that it’s becoming more of a problem and less of it’s okay it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. You see they exampled “bitch, slut, whore.” It’s so commonly used, and they even said how they’re finding it not tagged majority of the time, so seeing that surprisingly in the fics constantly it makes them cringe but it’s not a type of thing one can get over it’s apparent it’s becoming a slight problem. It begs the question how much degradation is too much, why is it constantly being used in fics? Does everyone love labeling the female y/n a bitch, whore, slut? Why is the male y/n never called a slut as much as female y/n? Do females have more of a degradation kink than men?

I can’t think of any advice to give based on the feedback, apart from obviously add it to your tags that there is a lot of degradation but it there is anything anyone else wants to add on this topic feel free to re-blog with your take or send me anons.

Describing features on a y/n fic - A few people have mentioned this, and I categorized it as a problem because well it is because not only does it make them cringe in smut fics but also in normal fics and poc feel oppressed in yet another way. When it’s written as y/n it’s supposed to allow the reader to insert themselves into the fic to imagine themselves in there, yet it’s not always done like that. As one of the responses said, it seems authors like that tend to project themselves or their ideal selves onto y/n physical feature wise. More often than not as the responses have indicated y/n is portrayed as cis female, white, blonde, blue eyes, other physical traits such as breast size, dick size body type, height and hair length are portrayed too, which pulls the readers out of imagining because they’re being told they have features they don’t. It’s especially bad for poc because their race never gets portrayed in fics, so it gives the message white race is the most favorable and we already know how racist the world is no need to bring it into fics either unknowingly or purposely.

Moral of the story, stop racism, end it. Go educate yourself.

Moral of the story, in regard to fics, well don’t describe y/n thoroughly. Instead leave it as vague as possible, I mean it’s not even needed to know what eye colour y/n has when they’re in the middle of getting railed.

Quick intermission to just say make sure you tag what gender and pronouns y/n has for your fic, so people are fully aware what y/n they’re getting in this fic.

Nor do we need to know what skin colour they have, it can easily be mentioned that a character is touching y/n’s body without saying they have milky skin indicating they’re white. It is very possible to not give y/n a race. Also, height, keep height out of it don’t describe it because not everyone is 5’2. (hello yes, I’m 5’10 so imagine me reading character a of height 5’8 towering over me, I mean maybe if they wear heels yes but otherwise no.) Similarly, don’t ever describe body types, you can say an outfit flatters a person’s figure without describing it, people can have sex without their body being specifically described i.e., slim figure, toned shapely legs. Please understand that by not describing y/n you’re helping to contribute to racism, and these wacky beauty standards that are already being forced onto us in the real world never mind the fictional world. 

Lack of safe word - Following on from kinks not being portrayed correctly there is the issue of lack of safe word. Now this is something that again didn’t come up quite a lot but that doesn’t mean it’s not an issue. Some are writing fics where one of the people involved, are being railed to high hell and it’s kinky as fuck or you’re writing a BDSM specific fic. Which is okay we are not judging or shaming but it’s concerning how with all this type of sex being had there is no even slight mention of the pairing having a safe word which is has the name would imply really important. It is there to keep the people participating in this kinky sex safe, without that it’s really harmful. Now if you think oh but writing in the discussion of safe words is really unsexy, especially when I’m just trying to make the characters fuck really kinky, then please go educate yourself. Safe words are incredibly sexy when you know it means you get to have bomb ass kinky sex but know that you can also have boundaries that should and will be respected, and a word or system i.e. traffic light system, to pause or stop when ever you need to in order to keep the kinky sexy safe.

The obvious advice is to incorporate consent and knowledge of safe word in your fic. It can be as simple as writing that the characters stop a minute for person a saying to person b you know your safe word. And then writing a small mini paragraph of person b feeling even more in love and/or turned on because their boundaries are being respected. Then you just carry on with writing the smut. You can imply easily that they have a safe word, that it’s been discussed, therefore they’re gong to be safe, respected and made to feel good.

Also, I know there are some people out there who are, a bit unsure on writing a fic in which one person uses their safe word. This is your friendly supportive message to just do it, don’t be afraid of what others think, do it for you it’s something great to write. There are many different ways you can go with it, so you do it if you want to 😊.

Honorable mentions of things that make the people cringe.

(Not a problem just as we are at the end of this category I figured I’d put honorable mentions. disclaimer again, these are other people’s comments from the questionnaire. You are entitled not to agree with them however do not attack me as some have been doing.)

fetishize people’s gender or race/ethnicity

uneducated use of other cultures to make it look authentic

Use of the word plum when they mean plump. One’s a fruit/colour, the other means having a full rounded shape.

PICK ME Y/N (we all know the type)

Stereotypes of all kinds. Of people, phrases, troupes etc.….

Written in a way it sounds monotone. i.e., “He did this, he did that, I did this.”

 When all y/n does during a smut scene is whine. There are other synonyms people.                                                                               

infantilization of y/n. stop making me feel like the person who the fic is about, is a nonce.                                                                                      

y/n is constantly oh so innocent. Like they can be a virgin don’t get it wrong. BUT we all know 9 times out of 10 y/n reads fanfic so they ain’t innocent.· 

no refractory period. 

try hard humour in the middle of smut.

terrible euphemisms

proper unrealistic dick sizes

adding in smut into a plot where it doesn’t fit

try hard

more to come potentially?       

END OF CATERGORY 3

(Feel free to discuss in comments, in my messages or send anons or anything like that if you want.)

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