#questioning physical nonhuman

[starwingedwolf]

A question for Fictionkins who are a specific character

I have been considering if I'm a specific character. I want to know about your process and how you figured out that you're a specific character. What questions did you ask yourself to figure it out? How did you feel about your kin? How exactly did you figure it out? TELL ME EVERYTHING /gen /srs

I share a couple traits with the character I'm considering. I also have a friendgroup who occasionally calls me by his name because we met on Roblox and I had an avatar of him when we first met. It makes me happy to be called by his name. It makes me happy to be perceived as him.

[theverynothumankai]

made little wings for the sides of my head today :3 justttt finished em, they took AGES tbh, you’ve no idea how much work those individual feathers take to cut out 😣

(these have been making me question angelkin for quite a bit now tbh, i’ve been meaning to make em and now having them, they’re kinda making me think and realize shit even more 😭)

[crescent-lunatic-wolf]

What exactly makes someone physically therian/otherkin/alterhuman/nonhuman?

On the face of it, it sounds impossible. I don’t want to use the ‘d’ word cuz it feels rude, but how else can you explain it?

Like damn, I wish I could physically shift. Somedays I even feel like I should/could have the capability. But I know, logically, that I can’t.

And I’m not saying that a nonhuman identity itself needs some sorta proof or minimum standard, cuz that’s just a rehash of certain bad-faith transphobic talking points. It’s the physical part, implying a difference of literal, meatspace form, that has me asking questions.

Hell, maybe it’s some sorta misnomer or I’m misinterpreting things! That’s why I’m asking. I want to educate myself, first and foremost.

[elliott-the-creature]

man I hate my meat suit so much sometimes. it’s so clumsy, it’s legs get so sore sometimes, it’s lungs can’t handle long strenuous exercise or even a brisk run/jog, it’s senses are both too strong and too weak… it doesn’t even look like how I’m supposed to look. it’s got boobs (no hate to boobs I’m just not supposed to have them (plus trans dysphoria goes brrrr)), it has the wrong ears, it has no fur or feathers or scales, it has the wrong shape and size… ugh.

is this what physical alterhumans think of when they think of their human body (talking specifically about non delusional physical alterhumans (no hate to them, I just don’t experience delusions so I can’t relate to them))?? I’m thinking I may be a physical nonhuman, but I know I have a human body, I just don’t identify with it at all, not on any level shape or form. it’s like having to wear a costume all the time—it’s not who I am, even though it’s how I appear to others. idk though!! physical alterhumans, please help! /nf

[joyfulbounds]

If you woke up tomorrow as your theriotype physically, assuming you could magically still communicate with everyone around you, what would you do with your life?

In this scenario you would be unbothered by humans beyond some basic explanation here and there, and perhaps some surprise at first, but you would quickly become ordinary to them after a short time. (No trouble from governments this way either)

[fox-physicality]

Lmao vent of some kind ignore the fact I just remembered this blog exists bc if I don't yap about it I'll start spiraling, methinks

cw / tw for

Anatomical wording of genitalia

Mentions of transphobia

Mentions of fetishizing / fear of being perceived as fetishizing

Mentions of cringe culture

I'm starting to feel more "comfortable" in my identity as someone who, while being genderfluid, also identifies as being simultaneously man and woman all the time.

But at the same time, I think I might be hitting a weird impass that isn't necessarily as big as my brain is making it out to be, yet still feels big, so 😭

I've been looking at my gender and how I would make my body layout if there were no restrictions due to current medical abilities and I've started looking at sexuality as a factor in how I would want things to be.

I've known I wanted both a penis and vagina for a while, a knotted one (holothere moment), but at the same time, I can't help but feel like looking at sexuality at all for these things is like me fetishizing my own transness?

Realistically, I know that sex isn't that surprising of a thing to take into consideration for things like transitions, but at the same time, I feel like being trans is always so disconnected from sexuality as an attempt to disprove transphobes views of "trans people are just fetishizing [women/men]! It's a crossdressing fetish and nothing more!" to the point it feels like looking at my transness through any sexual light is going to bring the validity of my identity down.

I think also I worry that my desiring both sets of genitalia and looking at it with the context of sexuality in mind might come off as fetishizing intersex people. Especially since, for a lot of perisex people, I think if you were to ask them what being intersex is, they would most likely reply "having both private parts" even though that's not entirely true, and there are a wide array of conditions that fall under being intersex that have nothing to do with physical genitalia.

I already know my being transspecies as well is, to a lot of people, a mockery of "real trans people," but it feels like even just this, without mentioning wanting ears and tails, is still "too much" to be grounded in reality enough for people to ever really see it as something that isn't just fodder for cringe compilations

I don't really know if this has any real point it's working towards, I mostly just want to get this all off my chest and I guess if people comment on it, then people comment on it? I think I'll probably just cut it off here because I know I've already yapped enough.

[species-dysphoria]

im not gonna rush into identifying it as anything but during work my paws transformed in flippers and it unlocked memories from deep deep inside us. something from the original core of our collective.

memories of believing that they had physically transformed into a dolphin and having very similar feelings as I do to my coyote self. of literally believing that they were physically a dolphin. and how others reacted to them. and of how out of place they felt. the body had to be around 7 or 8 I think? memories of sitting at aquariums and watching the dolphins, feeling such strong kinship with them. wanting to jump into the tank and be reunited with their species.

...idk why those memories were locked away from me or why it's suddenly resurfacing now. I knew that we had felt nonhuman for a long long time but I didn't realize that our zoanthropy has been part of us that long. or that we had ever been something besides a canine?

...and now that I'm partly transforming with traits related to dolphins, im wondering if when I split from the core that it made me a dolphin as well and that has just been locked away from me? cause I am somewhat of a copy of the core (aka the original "host") that split from them in their late teens. so it would make sense that I could still hold this part of them.

it's very confusing and I'm not sure what to do. ig I'm just gonna wait and see if these partial transformations keep happening? then maybe I'll try to identify it?

I'm fairly certain that the core was a short-beaked common dolphin? that's what feels most similar to them.

yeah this feels the most familiar. especially the markings and colors.

so...ig maybe I'm a dolphin?

[pshiftcultureis]

Pshifter culture is being scared you're crazy despite knowing you're not due to your real experiences but others doubt you do much

.

[paracosmic-gt]

So like, genuine question for others in these tags:

Physical nonhumanity is about identifying physically whether or not you consider yourself biologically human right? Like your nonhumanity is to the bone deep and fully you.

Aka we call our body nonhuman and it is nonhuman when we, nonhuman fronters, use it. We use holothere also.

However we know that the body is born from humans and has human genes and organs. We can experience phantom shifts and sensory changes but nothing involving full body changes like a clinical lycanthrope might have.

Does that "discount us" from the community?

We know that if we were going to experience lycanthropy or any transformation, it likely would've happened already, so we're not banking on it happening any time soon. We made this term a while back, that very much feels like us trying to make our nonhumanity "okay" and "safe" for the wider alterhuman community while being in this closet.

[yourlocalacepan]

fellow nonhumans, tell me about ur experiences!!

so I am a phonological polytherian and other hearted, my theory for my therenthropy is a combo of trauma, being a system and autism. I would love to hear other nonhuman experiences, what do you identify as? Do you have any theory on it? Do u identify on every level but physical, less than that, more than that? And any thing else you'd like to share. :3

[faislittlewhiteraven]

Sad things that are technically very minor in the scheme of things but nontheless ruin your day all the same.

I spent the last eight hours typing away at a big long post about my blorbo whom I very rarely have the energy or guts to gush about.

I love my blorbo and very much wanted to maybe, just maybe, write something that might cause people who have not thought as obsessively as I have about this character to maybe appreciate their struggles, realize where they might have been unfair to this character and others like them in the past and maybe, in a teeny tiny way help people writing fanfic about my blorbo to actually write them as a character rather than a (cute) set piece that happens to be in their blorbos' lives.

I was under no illusion that my blorbo would become theirs. In all honesty I didn't expect more than like two people to ever actually read it and good odds those two people would still disregard it completely because there are very legit reasons for people to find my blorbo obnoxious or annoying.

BUT STILL.

That doesn't mean I expected some program (that's apparently reset its automated schedule to mid afternoon instead of the 4am I had it) to close all my internet pages as I was still writing them!

So yeah. I'm just gonna go mope and look at silly memes for a while until I can stop feeling grief over losing my character gushing and I hope anyone potentially reading this is having a much better day.

[leophnyx]

As the flu dies within me, I feel more like myself these days. With that comes a desire to just be around others who allow questioning, and in turn will question me. I really miss the days when people used to question me, and although I just missed the days of grilling by the community, I sometimes cant help but wish for them in order to try it. (Dont worry, I 100% get why harsh grilling died out, and I'm not looking to disrespect anyone's trauma with it. It's just the fantastical thinking of someone who wasn't there.)

Sometimes I gaze upon the old Werelist and I find myself longing for a similar environment- one where we could have down-to-earth discussions and talk about things without having to neccesarily forgo critical thinking and questioning others. Of course, I never fit in seeing as how I believed in p-shifting and couldn't stand the ableism, but it's a bit surreal to see people there who I'd otherwise share so much in common with. At this point I'll never go back on the Werelist for a variety of reasons, but I find myself longing for a forum, place, something where I can go to discuss myself and this (without all of the ableism and animal abuse, of course).

We've made dozens of friends by questioning and being questioned, and I genuinely find it calming. I don't find it comfortable for others to accept what I say uncritically. There will be some amount of pushback (logically, seeing as how this is a different experience and all) and I do accept that, I just find it uncomfortable (and perhaps concerning) when people accept me uncritically like that. Which is unhealthy for me (to not be questioned) seeing as how it helps me figure myself out. I don't want people to get too wild with it (like don't go questioning personal details out of me, which is what made the original grilling so abusive) but I do like some amount of cognitive pushback.

I don't think I'll find healthy questioning in the therian community at this point. Even if I was one, the type of questions I want asked are those that most there cannot ask me. I am an animal and so my natural instinct is to go there... but maybe I should stick to my own kind.

But questioning to this extent isn't often found in other supernatural communities, which makes me wonder if something I'm doing is wrong? Is it really healthy to question and doubt this much, especially when they are your experiences? Maybe they know something I don't- I've reblogged a post on here before that said that the only reason why someone would question and introspect so much is if they knew something was "wrong" with the way they were thinking and feeling. Secure people have no reason to introspect, and so no reason to doubt.

Most of the community is on social media now, so forums are a no go. I guess I could try socializing with others, forming more text posts, etc. There was a thread style called The Hot Seat, in which someone would jump in and offer to be questioned or question others, in and out at their own discretion... I wonder if it would work here?

[were-link]

so much questioning right now. Questioning if I'm a dragon, a big cat and a mule. I've been physically shifting into a cheetah since last week I've felt like a cat since forever though. I thought I was a horse therian but now I'm thinking I'm a mule therian. And I thought I was a angel but I'm probably a dragon and not angel. It's all so exhausting

[creatingblackcharacters]

Lesson 7: "That's the Black one!"- Imagery and "Black-Coded" Characters

Now, you see me writing it!! I'm writing the lesson on Black-coded, non-human characters!! Y'all better go tell your friends and reblog, y'all been asking me forever about it!

This one was a bit hard for me to write. It didn't feel… New. It felt like a regurgitation of everything I'd already discussed. I was honestly confused every time people sent me questions; I thought we all understood how it worked. But I realized: that's not a bad thing! We can consider this an application of everything we've learned so far, because that’s all coding is, is an application!

The Definition

Coding (in media): giving a character or a group certain traits (physical or cultural experiences) that are similar to/that of a real-world specific group, without explicitly saying this fictional group is the real-world group. One may or may not mean to do it in their writing (which is where the opportunity for racist stereotype can leak in).

E.g., “queer-coded characters” gets used a lot on Tumblr; whether accurate or not, it is understood to mean that the blogger sees their/a queer identity portrayed by that character, or that the character was written with ‘queer’ traits in mind. Another example; Darwin Watterson is a goldfish in a world with no humans, but Darwin is Black-coded. The Fishmen in the One Piece Live Action are fantastical creatures, but they are Black-coded (of a very specific type of Black person; even!)

Youtuber KermitCurry explains and reinforces what I’m also going to explain here, but with a cool drawing of (the gorgeous) Grimmjow. She’s a Black artist and animator; go check her out and support her!

Here is a list of a few characters both canonically and Black-fanonically Black-coded:

When Coding Characters as Black

To keep it simple: if the rules apply when designing and writing a Black character, the same rules apply when designing and writing a Black-coded character! The moment you decided that this nonhuman entity was going to resemble a human group of people, you were obligated to be aware of the cultures and stereotypes of those people!

You can’t have a Black-coded character, emphasize a stereotype of Black people, and then say “oh, well, it’s not actually racist because they’re actually a cat-wolf creature!” Yes, it is. You’re still being racist, and upon noticing or being told, there’s no need to be defensive about it- just acknowledge ‘ah yes, I’ve messed up, I'm sorry for my actions’ and then actively work towards a better design or writing that does not include those things.

Example: Hair

Let’s say you want to draw hair on a fish-like Mer species, and you want them to be Black-coded. It would still be racist to give that Mer-woman pickaninny hair, even if "well they're not really Black!" You could find fancy fish scales or seaweed or something fish related to draw ‘Black hair textures’, so that we understand what it’s visually supposed to represent while still being fantastical. Or a robot! Someone mentioned tubes for locs, and you could do curly wires for twists. It's possible! Get creative!

I’ve been asked numerous times about Black hair on furries. Not that I’m the most educated on furries or furry culture- I am not- but they’re already anthropomorphic animals that talk, have human hobbies and habits, and often have pretty rainbow colors. It should not, then, warrant a complaint of “unrealistic” if you respectfully add Black hairstyles to them.

Example: Species

The point about furries actually brings up another good point. Watch out when you're coding Black characters on animals or animal-like species. Often people will have the “dark-skinned, struggling with balancing their humanity monster” Black/Black-coded, and the “pale skinned monster that somehow understands this battle more than them and can save them from themselves”. This is rooted in racist imagery.

I have mentioned it before in response to an ask, but if the only people you find yourself coding as your ‘monkey/animal/monster/beast’ creations are Black and/or dark-skinned, you are- however intentional it is or isn’t- replicating a racist, dehumanizing pattern in league with King Kong and ‘ravishing the white woman/body’. I’m not inherently ‘rugged and masculine’ as a queer Black woman, thus meant to be pushed into the werewolf role. Black men aren’t beasts that can’t control their violent impulses, thus meant to be pushed into the animalistic role. Why do you think Black bodies being beast-like is sexy? Why do you think we are not physically capable of delicacy? Of gentility?

This doesn’t mean that Black characters can’t be werewolves or those sorts of creatures- but you need to be writing/designing with intent, and that means recognizing when you just ‘thought it looked cool’, and that thought turned out to be a racist belief upon further reflection.

Example: Skin

Let’s say your demon species has dark grey skin bc they're rock people or something- yes, the grey skin is because it's a demon species, we recognize that it's not desaturated brown skin. Fine. But God forbid that this grey-skinned ashen group of Black-coded characters are the unequivocal villains? And everyone else that isn’t Black-coded are the ‘good guys’? But ‘it’s okay, because they’re not Black, they’re grey!’? Yes, this is still racism. There’s no getting out of it.

Example: Intelligence

If your Black-coded species is the one that is ‘less cultured’, ‘talks funny’, supposed to be ‘stupid’, or in need of some good (white) character to ‘change their ways and become better people’… Just don't do that. I should not have to say this. Black people are not less intelligent, or ‘more inclined to brawn over brain’, 'more likely to act out of instinct', ‘in need of more education/direction’, or every other reason that was used to justify our enslavement and now, present arrest and imprisonment rates.

Example: Culture

This segues from my last point on intelligence. There’s arguments on coding species that are meant to be "savage" or "inhuman", giving them stereotypical loin cloths or tattered clothes and having them "need to be saved". Now, I'm not informed enough about D&D to make valuable commentary on the existence and history of orcs. However, if you've decided to create an Orc culture, and it's clear that your imagery is taken from Black and/or Indigenous cultures, in addition to the language of savagery and white saviorism itself… That's extremely racist. And if you're thinking "Ice, of course no one would do that in 2024", Yes. Yes, they would. The bar is low, but don't ever assume people can't, don't, and won’t find a way to limbo under it.

Black and Brown people don’t need to be ‘saved’ from our own cultures or ‘introduced’ to anything. We don't need to be 'made better'. If that’s the narrative that you find yourself buying into while you write your story, Black or Black-coded characters, you need to step back and evaluate.

How This Imagery Lasts

Jim Crow Museum- Racist Cartoons and Anti-Black Imagery

This is obviously not everything I could put here as a example, but I wanted to offer a small example of how heinously racist imagery has made its way into the present. From depicting Serena Williams as an overgrown, childish, large-lipped Black woman (and whitewashing Afro-Japanese woman Naomi Osaka into the ideal, victimized blonde white woman), to Lebron James’ Vogue photo (this Black, married man now suddenly slave to the intensity of ball and white women for this cover), to the entirety of the Black Pete festival in the Netherlands.

This is imagery and behavior that evolves and lasts. What you put to paper will have an effect on someone else's ideas. You might not even think you believe these things, but someone looking at your art or reading your work will think you do! You should not want to be evoking any of this, coded or not, regardless of ‘if there’s a human involved’ because frankly… well, people already don’t see Black people as humans. We need to be treating our Black and Black-coded characters with care, and that means doing good research and avoiding replicating caricatures.

[pshiftcultureis]

hi! not a culture ask, just a question.

what exactly is physical shifting? i havent really seen many resources on what it means & im a lil curious :]

Since this is a genuine question that is important to answer for this account, we will answer. Please note we are talking about those who are p-shifters from the community (such as with packs, and the influential people such as Blaze and Leah.) Not those who are reclaiming the label.

Of course, anyone who uses the label is welcome, but we cannot speak for others who havent grown to know they were p-shifters specifically from being within the community. We hope that specifies what we mean better.

Physical shifting, or p-shifting, is the ability to physically transform into a creature or animal. Usually, those who p-shift are wolves, but the reason is unbeknownst to all of us for why that is.

We will not get into the nuances of it, but a community has been built around this idea and trying to understand why this phenomenon happens to us (As a whole). P-shifting and the community are incredibly intertwined in understanding what it is, hence why we mention the community here a bit also.

It is simply something that people are able to do, and the community over the years has built a database of information in an attempt to help those who suspect they are one to help them along in discoveries and attempts.

P-shifting, as far as we have experienced and read, is something that encompasses very little of our experiences but is important to our community nonetheless. (Although it isn't mentioned as much anymore within the community.) It is told to be incredibly painful, and is usually said to only happen after a list of conditions is met. (which, also varies depending on who you talk to.)

There isn't a set *exact* definition to what physical shifting is, but we hope this can help any who are curious to understand physical shifting a bit more.

Overall, it is the ability to change your form into that of a creature or animal. It is being reclaimed more often within the nonhuman community for those who are expressing themselves to quite literally change into an animal.

It is a nuanced topic with many years of development behind it, and we cannot give a good explanation to what it is *exactly* like. We hope this has been sufficient enough to answer your question.

[writingwithcolor]

How can non-Jewish writers include Jewish characters in supernatural stories without erasing their religion in the process?

Anonymous asked:

I have a short story planned revolving around the supernatural with a Jewish character named Danielle (who uses they/them pronouns). Danielle will be one of a trio who will be solving the mystery of two brides' deaths on the day of their wedding. My concern with this is the possibility of accidentally invalidating Danielle's religion by focusing on a secular view of the afterlife. At the same time, I don't want to assume that Jewish people can't exist in paranormal stories, nor do I want to use cultural elements that don't belong to me. So, how do I make sure that Danielle is included in the plot without erasing their Jewishness?

Okay so to start with I think we need to ask a question about the premise: what is a secular afterlife? I’m not asking this to nitpick or be petty, but to offer you expanded ways of thinking through this issue and maybe others as well.

A Secular Afterlife

What is a secular afterlife? To begin with, I get what you mean. The idea of an afterlife we see in pop culture entities like ghost media owes more to a mixture of 19th-century spiritualist tropes drawn from titillating gothic novels than to anything preached from the pulpit of an organized house of worship. Yet those tropes--the ominous knocking noises from beyond, the spectral presences on daguerrotype prints, the sudden chill and the eerie glow, all of those rely on the idea of there being something beyond this life, some continuation of the spirit when the body has ceased to breathe. For that, you need to discount the ideas that the consciousness has moved on to another physical body and is currently living elsewhere, and that it was never separate from the body and has now ceased to exist. Can we say that this is secular?

More so: Gothic literature, as the name suggests, draws heavily on Catholic imagery, even when it avoids explicit references to Catholicism. Aside from the architectural imagery, Catholic religious symbols permeate the genre, as well as the larger horror and supernatural media genres that grew from it: Dracula flinches from a crucifix, priests expel demons from human bodies, Marley’s Ghost haunts Ebenezer Scrooge in chains. The concepts of heaven and hell, and nonhuman beings who dwell in those places, are critical to making the narratives work. 

The basis also draws from a biblical story, that of the Witch of Endor. The main tropes of Victorian spiritualism are present: Saul never sees the ghost of Samuel, only the Witch of Endor is able to see “A divine being rising” from wherever he rises from, and her vague description, “I see an old man rising, wearing a robe,” evokes the cold readings of charlatan mediums into the present (Indeed, some rabbinic sources commenting on this assert that this is exactly what was going on).

While neither of these views of its origin define the genre as the sole property of Catholicism--or of Judaism for that matter--it would be hard exactly to categorize them as secular.

A Jewish Perspective on ghosts

However, it’s not the case that ghost media is incompatible with Jewishness, assuming that it doesn’t commit to a view of heaven and hell duality that specifically embraces a Christian spiritual framework. 

Jewish theology is noncommittal on the subject of the afterlife. The idea of a division between body and soul in the first place is found in ancient Egypt, for instance, earlier than the earliest Jewish texts. In Jewish text it’s present in narratives like the creation story, in which God crafts a human body out of earth and then breathes life into it once it’s complete. It also appears in our liturgy: the blessings prescribed to be recited at the beginning of the day juxtapose Elohai Neshama, a blessing for the soul, with Asher Yatzar, expressing gratitude for the body, recited by many after successfully using the bathroom. 

Yet it’s not clear that this life-force is something separate than the body that lives beyond it, until the apparition of the Witch of Endor. The words we use to describe it, whatever it is, evoke the process of breathing rather than that of eternal life: either ruach (spirit, or wind) or neshama (soul, or breath): neither is a commitment to the idea that it does--or that it doesn’t--go somewhere else when the body returns to the earth. 

Jewish folklore, however, leans into the idea of ghosts and other spiritual beings inhabiting the earthly plane (and others). Perhaps most famous is the 1937 movie The Dybbuk, in which a young scholar engaging in kabbalistic practices calls upon dark forces to unite him and his fated love, only to find himself possessing her body as a dybbuk. It appears that he is about to be successfully exorcized, but ultimately when his soul leaves her body, hers does as well. 

More relevantly to your story, a Jewish folktale inspired the movie The Corpse Bride. In the folktale version, a newly-engaged man jokingly recites the legal formula he will soon recite at his wedding, and places his ring on the finger of a nearby corpse--a reference to a time when antisemitic violence is said to have gotten worse not only at Jewish and Christian holidays as it does still to this day, but around Jewish weddings as well. The murdered bride stands up, a corpse reanimated complete with consciousness, and demands that the bridegroom honor his legal obligation. 

In the movie, the bride gives up her demand willingly: her claim on him is emotional rather than legal, and she finally accepts that he has an emotional connection with another person, that he doesn’t love her. In the folk tale, the dead woman takes him to court to decide whether their marriage is legal, since he spoke the legal words to her in front of witnesses as is required, and the court rules that the dead do not have the right to make legal demands on the living. In this version, the moral of the story is that a legal formula is an obligation; that when he jokingly bound himself to the corpse, he not only disrespected the dead but also the legal framework that structures society, and by so doing risked being obligated to keep his side of a contract he never intended to enact. 

This speaks to the ways that a Jewish outlook can differ from a Christian-influenced “secular” one. Christian-influenced cultural ideas can often focus around feeling the right thing, while Jewish stories will often center on doing the right thing. Does the Corpse Bride leave because she realizes she is not the one he loves? Because she--or he--learned a valuable lesson? Or because she loses her court case? It’s not that the boy’s emotions are irrelevant to the story--the tension, the suspense, the horror of the story takes place primarily within the boy’s emotional landscape--but emotions on their own are not a solution. The question “should he marry her” can be answered emotionally, but “has he married her” can only be answered by a legal expert, and once it has been the deceased bride may not have changed her emotional attachment to him, but she no longer has legal standing to pursue her claim. 

Centering legal rectitude over emotional catharsis isn’t a requirement for having Jewish characters in your story, but it’s worth thinking about what is and isn’t universal, what is and isn’t actually all that secular. 

Meanwhile, back at the topic:

Where does any of this place Danielle?

Well, unless you’re positing a universe in which Christian or other deities or cosmologies are confirmed to exist (See Jewish characters in a universe with author-created fictional pantheons for more on that topic), there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be perfectly fine interacting with whatever the setting you’re building throws at them. 

My wishlist for this character and setting runs more to the general things to consider when writing fantasy settings with Jewish characters: 

Don’t confirm or imply that Jesus is a divine being. That means no supernatural items like splinters of the cross, grails, nails, veils, etc. There’s nothing particularly powerful or empowering about this one guy who lived and died like so many others.

Don’t show God’s body and especially not God’s face, or confirm that any other gods or deities exist, whether that’s Jesus, Aphrodite, or Anubis, or someone you made up for the context. 

Don’t put Danielle in a position where they’re going to play into an antisemitic trope like child murder, blood drinking, world domination, or financial greed. If you have to, name it and let Danielle express discomfort with or distaste for those actions both because Jewish values explicitly oppose all of those things but also because Danielle as a Jewish character would be painfully aware of these stereotypes as present and historical excuses for antisemitic violence. 

Do consider what Danielle’s personal practice might look like. What does Danielle do on Shabbat? What do they eat or refrain from eating? What are their memories of Jewish holidays and how is their current holiday observance different than their childhood? I know I say “Jewishness is diverse” on every ask, but it is, and these questions--which also underscore how very much Judaism is rooted in one’s actions during this life--will help you develop how Judaism actually functions to inform Danielle’s character, even if you don’t spell out the answers to each of these questions in text. 

Do let Danielle find joy, comfort, and identity in their Jewishness not just in contrast with Christianity but simply because it’s part of the wholeness of their character. I know the primary representation of Jewishness is a snappy one-liner in a Christmas episode followed by the Jewish character joining in the Christmas spirit, blue edition, but make room for Jewishness to inform how Danielle approaches the events of your story, or why they decide to get or stay involved.  

-Meir

Hi it’s Shira with some Jewish ghost story recs written from inside–

When The Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb (deliriously good queer YA Jewish paranormal, mainstream enough that it’s got a good chance of being at your local library and won all kinds of awards)

The Dyke and the Dybbuk by Ellen Galford (sorry for the slur, warning for a paragraph of biphobia in the book but it’s an older book. I read this right before my divorce so my memories are super fuzzy but it’s about this modern day lesbian who gets possessed by the ghost of a different lesbian from hundreds of years earlier in Jewish history.) Nine of Swords Reversed by Xan West z’L of blessed memory - another queer Jewish paranormal.

The general plot is that two partners are struggling with how to be honest with each other about the effect disability is having on them. It’s got a very warm and fuzzy cozy vibe but kink culture is central to the worldbuilding so if that isn’t your vibe I didn’t want you to go in unaware.

The Dybbuk in Love by Sonya Taaffe. I don’t remember the details but I remember loving it, it’s m/f and romance between possessor and possessed.

I wrote a really short one called A Man of Taste where a gentile vampire woman and a Jewish ghost/dybbuk get together.

~S