#jewish goblincore

[joyouspursuits]

I've decided that shame is not for me anymore. I am opting out of feeling ashamed from now on.

[mintytea-exe]

EXCUSE ME SPOTIFY?

[rubecso]

It's Passover, so I get to reblog my second most popular post on this site.

My contribution to the Passover shitposting

[small-angry-turtle]

Hey guys, I love goblincore's dirt, chaos, trinket-hoarding, mushrooms and androgyny, but can we rename it racooncore or something? So our Jewish associates stop being reminded of that ancient trauma from 1200s? Which directly feeds into caricatures we All know?

[ursulaklegay]

haha the way u tagged the goblincore post. like ur telling people not to use the word but you still tagged it separately so it would show up in the searches lmaooo

that's business baby

(no but fr I did it because I wasn't sure about the term + I wanted to put it into context and for people who use it to see the controversy around it)

[is-the-thing-actually-jewish]

Ik this isn't about whether or not something is actually Jewish but I've been curious about this for over a year. I'd heard a few times on the internet that goblins are based on antisemitic imagery and that it's one of the big controversies/criticisms of goblincore. I personally enjoy goblincore: collecting rocks and snail shells, cozy and simple clothes, and enjoying anything that's shiny, whether or not it has monetary value; and when I draw my goblins I avoid things I know are common parts of antisemitic imagery, like the dramatically hooked noses and such, but I also want to draw more diverse noses so I'm not always drawing button noses. Ik this is probably a silly ask and I'm sorry if it's dumb I just want to know...here is one of my goblin drawings as an example of what I draw...

It’s not a dumb ask at all, and we welcome silly asks (though this isn’t that either).

So, goblins are very old European mythological creatures. And with most old European mythologies, they've gotten tangled up in some pretty antisemitic imagery. While no one has ever outright said "this goblin represents Jews" in fairytales, for anyone with an understanding of antisemitic imagery, the parallels and underlying messages are evident. Jews have for a long time been portrayed as having shorter statues, speaking in strange languages, and having grotesque facial features. Jews have been portrayed as living at the margins of society and engaging in amoral behaviour such as outright thievery or hoarding wealth. Sound familiar? Now, goblin-core as I understand it seeks to emulate popular features of goblins, such as dressing more 'grunge' and collecting shiny trinkets and generally not aligning with mainstream societal norms. Goblin-core in its origins is merely a niche countercultural aesthetic, and I believe most people do not engage in it maliciously. However, it becomes problematic when the goblin-core aesthetic readily embraces artwork and images with antisemitic undertones, and when the people who identify with the aesthetic try to shut down Jews when we voice our discomfort with certain aspects of it. As an alternate term, some prefer “corvid-core,” as it has the same nesting and shiny-collection vibe without the history.

Verdict: It's not inherently antisemitic, but just like cottagecore isn't inherently white supremacist, you've got to tread carefully in the space and check yourself.

[ofdirtandbones]

Hello friend!

Whats the difference between gremlincore and goblincore? To you personally, because while I could Google it, I'd rather ask a real person

Hi friend !! There are none !

We just changed the word so that everyone could feel confortable in the community ! Some Jewish people said it was antisemitic, some said it wasn’t,,,

at the end of the day it’s supposed to be a community where we have fun so if simply changing the word makes everyone more confortable then so be it !

[chaotic-archaeologist]

You're an educated goblin with a religious fervor for dirt. A dirt penitent. I love it.

Hi there, I want to make this a teaching moment because I think I understand what you were trying to say, but there is a disconnect between your intentions and the way you have come across. So first: thank you, and I'm glad you enjoy my blog!

Now on to the learning opportunity. Maybe you've read my bio, and maybe you haven't. But I am Jewish, and I'm pretty open about that on this blog. Goblincore is a whole thing. I get it. I personally choose not to engage with it, but I know there's a thriving community on tumblr, and that not all goblinecore is necessarily antisemitic.

That being said: please try to avoid calling Jewish people goblins. There is a long history of using goblins as antisemitic caricatures for Jewish people. Especially with the antisemitism flavored goblins that are getting a lot of publicity through JKR's new Harry Potter video game, I had an uncomfortable reaction to seeing this in my inbox.

Also, for what it's worth, Judaism has a very different relationship with sin/penitence than Christianity. I don't think I would ever describe myself as a penitent because that is a very Christian construct. I certainly repent for things, but I am not a penitent. This is also not how I engage with archaeology—yes, my discipline has things we need to atone for, and I am doing my best to further that process, but I'm also a firm believer in the positive aspects of archaeology and its power to tell stories of the past.

So again, I thank you for your sentiment, and I don't mean this to come across as angry or chiding. But I also wanted to take this opportunity to explain some of the nuances behind the wording of this ask.

-Reid

[gold-snek-hoe]

*Deep inhale*

So

Here's why YOU should read The Hollow Kingdom (and why it's cool if it's not your cup of tea)

1. Clare B. Dunkle is a sweetheart and trans-friendly! I've personally spoken to her via email and she made me cry, she's so nice.

2. Are you tired of goblins that are all little green one-note Jewish stereotypes? Tired of goblins that are evil, meant only to be killed? What if, instead, there's a fascinating and rich lore to them, and they're portrayed sympathetically (though by no means morally black and white, more on that later). Goblins in The Hollow Kingdom are diverse and they extravagant fashion. You want goblincore? Here's your goblincore.

3. Morally nuanced characters. Even the most vile of people can have some sympathetic qualities, and the even the kindest character can do something awful. Even my faves have made me seethe.

4. There's a catboy. Seylin my beloved. He carries the brain cell through the third book.

5. Maybe this one's just me projecting, but I think the Goblin King Marak is so, so autistic coded. He's honest, sometimes brutally. He doesn't understand a lot of human customs. He takes things literally. He has a strong sense of justice. He can be pretty emotionally dysregulated.

6. He's also a huge, sassy bitch and kind of an idiot, but that's just a personal preference.

7. Themes of misconception and villianization of other cultures/groups and finding common ground.

8. Fellow monsterfuckers, stop sleeping on this goldmine of simp material. There's even a sad emo elf dude in the third book. Not to my taste, but I'm sure there's plenty of people who would love him.

TW below for mentions of kidnapping:

NOW, there are very questionable relationship dynamics in these books, which I totally get might be a deal breaker. There's a lot of kidnapping women, huge age gaps, and a general lack of consent, though no explicit r*pe, thankfully. It's all still gross, and there's no situation in which kidnapping your wife is morally acceptable. Part of the reason I self-ship with the goblin King is because I'm an enthusiastically consenting party, unlike his canonical wife Kate. So yeah. You're so valid if this isn't cool.

I also understand that Goblins have an unfortunate historical link to antisemitism, which might make people turn off from the idea of them in fiction entirely. That is also valid. I personally think goblins *can* be handled well, going back to my earlier selling point. It's sad that a lack of antisemitic rhetoric is a selling point, but this is the world we live in, and I'll take what I can get. I still understand if you're not interested.

But if none of this turns you off, I'd highly recommend this series. No piece of fiction is perfect, but there's a lot of good here, and I think Tumblr could get a good deal of Fandom milage out of it if y'all gave it a look.

[neopronouns]

With the aesthetic for a set gender thing (as you put it “a gender related to [aesthetic] in a [gender] way”) is there any aesthetics you wouldn’t be comfortable doing?

i won’t use names like ‘goblincore’, since the terms have been criticized by jewish people. however, i’m pretty sure most/all ‘goblin’ aesthetics have alt names (like ‘gremlincore’), so i’ll still do them, i’ll just use those alt names!

other than that, i don’t think so? i’m fine with dark, creepy, gory, and unreality-related aesthetics, none of them really bother me.

[kendrixtermina]

Points against Zionism: Moral vs Pragmatic Arguments

The Israeli framing of their atrocities is often as a sort of tough pragmatic decision: Maybe it's ugly, but they have no choice. It needs to be done

From that starting position, some ppl then work themselves into sadism & dehumanization to ease the cognitive dissonance of hurting people to do so, telling themselves they are not hurting people, but monsters who deserve it, but not everyone goes so far. There's enough people who say they don't like the pictures, they don't like Netanyahu, but it's needed to protect their people.

Often the counterargument is done in a kantian, moralistic fashion: (No end could possibly justify these means) coulpled with moral shaming (if you support these evil means, you're a bad person)

However, this is useless.

Zionists are indoctrinated to be paranoid & think all non-jews intrinsically want to kill them.

They're in self-preservation mode:If someone is coming at you with a knife and it's you or them, and you kill them in self-defense, most ppl will say that was justified: It was you or them, you are not obligated to die. From the zionists' pov, they are being asked to just die or at least take a big risk.

Let's notice that this isn't unique to them: Many ppl say that they would kill to protect their family. Few would say that if it's between their family or a stranger they pick the stranger.

So the moral shaming doesn't work: It sounds like being shamed for not obediently dying.

The survival instinct is one of the most powerful drives in the human psyche, which is why politicians love to trigger it & condition ppl so as to make it more easy to trigger.

It's kind of evil genius.

This belief is often planted at toddler age so it's pre-rational and triggers an indistnct child-like emotional response that can be hard to dislodge... at least by discourse.

There are so many videos of ppl who instantly quit zionism after just witnessing a Palestinian being normal & nice. Though even those mention having a conditioned fear response - just that when they did, the murder they expected did not occur, proving the falsehood at once.

This is also probably also where you get these "everything is antisemitic" discourse things that, idk, get bent out of shape over goblincore aesthetic, cosplays or cartoon witches, rather resembling a conspiracy theorist looking for evidence of illuminati in a music video or otherwise seeming to look for confirmation of a pre-determined, feared outcome, than any other anti-discrimination awareness that would be concerned with manifest, statistically measurable unfair treatment, harassment or stereotypic portrayal of real people. (which of course does without doubt actually happen to jewish ppl at times)

It's not a rational fear, & it's infuriating to see the faction with the bombs talking of being scared, but while they are scared they can't rly absorb information, neither empathy or nor logic based arguments. Scared ppl get worse at both.

Now, on the other hand the response cannot be to coddle the fear or treat is as rational, because that gives it leverage, plays along with bullshit & concedes their assumptions

What to do instead:

Counter pragmatic arguments on a pragmatic level.

To see what I mean, look no further than this recently publicized discussion with Biden, where he is telling them to "maybe be nice pretty please", & Netanyahu responded that the USA used carpet bombing of German cities and nuclear bombs to win WWII.

On the american side this really shows the absurdity of the foreign policy blob & the US playing world police when it's the biggest rulebreaker. If they don't follow the rules, why should weaker countries?

But on the Israeli side, it's a pragmatic argument: "Ugly acts solve uglier problems. Why don't you let us do what needs to be done? YOU did." this is why biden's weaksauce beseechments do nothing (that, & his refusal to use actual leverage), from their pov he's asking them to forgo the thing that works to look good, even though biden's country didn't in the same situation, he looks like a hypocrite.

But the big problem here, on a pragmatic level, is that it assumes carpet bombing & nukes are why WWII was won (and not because the fascists picked fights with all their neighbors at once, which was just never gonna work)

That is not true. The idea of "strategic bombing" is based on faulty psychology. Surveys done after the war show that carpet bombing did NOT lower axis morale (but rather gave the Nazis fuel for propaganda, in which they claimed the allies were the genocidal ones. they kinda pioneered that DARVO thing that Israel is also fond of) & the nuke was dropped when Japan had already pretty much lost the war.

The allies really should've known that seeing has Hitler's attack on civilians in London did not lower British morale either, they just kept-calm-&-carry-on'd right through it. Though they attributed it to their superior Britishness & thought the enemy would be different.

Wether or not carpet bombing civilians is moral doesn't matter here, because it's INEFFECTIVE.

the means will NOT archieve the ends, justified or otherwise.

It's the same thing as with torture. It doesn't make ppl divulge infor or change their allegiance, ppl end up making shit up to tell the torturers what they wanna hear

(Though, as in all these things, the most efficient ppl at convincing are gonna be the in-group. If an outsider speaks, they're easily dismissed as "just another one of THEM" but an "us" is seen as a person & given the benefit of the doubt, their opinion is seen as mattering.

The best way to fight sexism is men not laughing at sexist jokes, the best way to fight racism is white ppl acting embarassed of racist relatives (that, and systemic reforms, but I'm talking the individual layer here. The systemic remedy to zionism is probably international pressure. I think systemic & individual measures are best combined because you can't neglect either half, but that's a different essay)

In that sense I'm grateful to all those Jewish protesters.)

[aftonfamilyvalues]

you bring up a good point about jkr haters never bringing up goblins more generally, even though self-identified q***rs are obsessed with them. There's a 'aesthetic wiki' entry on goblincore with quotes about how JKR's goblins are antisemitic but goblincore is fine because *their* depictions are more like the 'original' fae. And there's like a weirdly long and convoluted list of traits that people are advised to avoid giving to their goblincore goblins so they're not problematic. like you can't tag your coin collection with 'goblincore'. idk, living like this sounds exhausting, and the whole thing feels less like caring about jewish people and more like not wanting to get a call-out. anyway the word goblin has lost all meaning now

it definitely does sound exhausting, but then again everything those types do sounds exhausting. i would rather not walk on eggshells and only make myself bombastic in the most annoying and acceptably mainstream of ways. at that point why even use the term goblin at all? if you think something is so deeply rooted in bigotry, throw it all out. but then again they only care because they want to make jk rowling look like shes evil in every single way. its the same reason they blasted her thread for childrens art with porn and then called her the pedophile

[polyamorouspunk]

As a black person with locs I find it okay for white people to mat their hair as long as they don't try to connect it to black hair. They look different, are taken care of differently and have different cultural significance.

Matted hair in crust punk makes sense because it does have its own cultural significance in the community. My problem is when white people mat their hair to copy black styles and say that they are the same thing.

I think most people I know had it for the hippie/crust aesthetic of like. The “homeless” look. But specifically called it dreads not matted hair. Or used the terms interchangeably. I don’t know anyone personally who mats their hair to get the ���black aesthetic” but I know people who do it for the crust look. And obviously there’s the whole like. What one person says they think is fine/isn’t racist doesn’t speak for a whole group. Other examples being like “goblincore” debate between Jewish people and the use of “W**d***” in between Indigenous Americans. Not really looking to get into either of those conversations here as they have nothing to do with the theme of this blog but I mean those are other notable “is it racist for “nons” to use this” or “is is ____phobic for “nons” to use this” debates as examples.

[mogai-sunflowers]

what's wrong with goblincore? /gen (genuinely do not know any controversy around aesthetics other than cottagecore/if you don't feel comfortable saying, thats fine)

it's generally antisemitic because goblins are antisemitic caricatures, a jewish person could explain it much better than i could and i don't have many spoons rn but yeah, it's widely considered to be antisemitic /info

[lxvenderskies]

about the declined post, is there another term for Goblincore that isn’t antisemitic?? We didn’t know that and now we wanna know another term for it :)

ANSWERED !

i think gremlincore is what my Jewish friend said is a better term, but im not fully sure

[aura-oracle]

Sometimes I feel bad to say that I have a goblin persona (facet). I do not want to be misunderstood as acting like any of the sterotype and besides the sterotype is really bad against a human race (Jewish). My exact look might be debatable until my own brain decides on something more concrete but the point is I am a nice little forest goblin, just get to know me. I will act kind toward you. I might be goblin during my more executive dysfunction periods but it doesn't make me being goblinkin less valid, at least I hope not. I am like the goblincore way of being. I have a hoard. I love the forest and mushrooms and walks and foraging and staying in a cabin. I totally would if the body's EDS & chronic pain didn't prevent it. So I do more things in headspace and heartspace (I think I just made up this phrase). If you are ever in goblin market (oh just something silly I made up...it's like when goblins meet each other) say hi even if I'm shy & awkward. Mush love! 💚🍄

(And excuse my silly anxiety).