#the world of academia and how incredibly biased it is

[not-poignant]

I’m super intrigued by the worldbuilding in the Underline version of omegaverse! Are the websites Nate was reading about heats correct in their reasoning for omegas having heats? How much is the science skewed by bias against omegas?

Not me completely forgetting what I wrote and having to go back and double check so I can answer this probably x.x I would never

All right, you have hit the nail on the head though - there is absolutely scientific bias against omegas! So there's some truth, and some emotional judgement which is absolutely a sack of shit.

Let's look at what Nate finds when he researches this:

This was what heat was, the clouding of his mind, the haziness, the drive to be with someone stronger who would protect him. He used to research it once, because what was even the point of something that drove him crazy? But it made sense once he read about it. Omegas were physiologically the weakest and went into heat to compel or hypnotise alphas into protecting them and looking after them. The articles he'd read made it sound like a trick that omegas pulled, their scents and bodies changed, and alphas had to act, needed to do something about it. Even now, Nate felt manipulative. 

The statement 'omegas were physiologically the weakest' is a scientific judgement that's based purely on raw muscle size and ability and clearly comes from a world that privileges muscular strength (i.e. alpha strength) over hormonal strength (I would argue that anyone who falls / is leveled by an omega's hormones is not necessarily the 'stronger' one, and that it doesn't need to be about strength in the first place).

The statement 'The articles he'd read made it sound like a trick that omegas pulled (and) to compel or hypnotise alphas into protecting them' - strongly suggests that these articles are being written by alpha scientists who probably resent the fact that they're drawn to omegas, or that omegas in heat influence everyone around them. It also makes it seem like having to give into the hormonal urge to protect an omega is a burden, and not something that alphas take advantage of all the time to hurt or harm omegas. Omegas are positioned as unfairly manipulative, almost. This isn't fair scientific inquiry, it's strong bias against omegas, using research to justify it.

Nate could find more fair research articles, but he's not as likely to find them, because they're not as common, and they're not the commonly held views. The research articles that Temsen and Gary for example are publishing are very different to this tonally, but, they're not going to come up in the top search results. They're not going to be cited most on the Wikipedia page.

There are kernels of truth. Biologically, omegas secrete pheromones that encourage alphas to form strong bonds of partnership with them, to protect them (for omegas with uteruses, to specifically protect them during conception through to birth and beyond as well). But making judgements on this using weasel words like 'weak' or 'hypnotised' etc. is not particularly in the spirit of being fair or accurate!

I would compare the scientific representation to how women were represented in science in like the 50s and 60s, maybe a little beyond. There's inaccuracies, there's not enough research into the omega body, there's not enough appreciation that omegas are regular people who deserve equality, equity and basic human rights access to at least the same degree as alphas etc. And any articles suggesting otherwise are indicative of changes to come in the future, but are currently ahead of their time.

[ianthe-is-a-bitch-and-i-love-her]

I first realized that the best ghost stories are love stories after watching The Haunting of Bly Manor, and though I've experienced a lot of media since that reaffirmed that understanding, The Narrow by Kate Alice Marshall really feels like it's closing the loop. It rhymes with Bly in a way that feels like I've come to the end of some great journey, and am now prepared to start another. Like Bly, The Narrow is a story about abuse. It's a story about possession, in more than one sense. And it's a story that asserts that true love, the love that's worth keeping, is the love that knows how to let go.

Our story follows Eden, a senior at a prestigious private boarding high school rich with history and legends, especially around its deadly river, The Narrow, which is unapologetically based on the Bolton Strid. Eden is excited to return to school and escape a summer vacation marred by a profound abuse that she is refusing to think about. However, upon arrival she discovers that her parents have neglected to pay her tuition - coincidentally, they've had to pay a lot of legal fees recently - and she is forced to take on a unique arrangement to remain enrolled. She must act as the live-in companion of fellow student Delphine, a reclusive girl who cannot leave her carefully refurbished dorm room, as any contact with water sends her into seizures. Eden knows something about Delphine that almost no one else does, however - at the beginning of her first year, Eden saw Delphine fall into The Narrow and be swept away - and what The Narrow takes is never returned.

The mystery at the heart of the story is, ultimately, not that complicated, but it is beautiful in its simplicity and the way it plays with the reader's expectations. Those expectations are shaped heavily by Eden's point of view, and Eden is a triumph of an unreliable narrator. She actively avoids thinking about things that weigh on her and occasionally skates over her own actions where they clash with her self-image, but these more obvious and dramatic omissions draw attention away from the subtler ways that her biases and coping mechanisms shape her understanding of the world around her, and it took me until about the three-quarters mark to know where and how to disbelieve her perceptions. She is incredibly compelling, deeply empathetic, and absolutely drowning in self-worth issues. The supporting cast is equally compelling, and the author injects a surprising sense of depth into each member of her friend group in remarkably few lines. Each give the impression of being flawed, well-rounded, but fundamentally decent people, and they all feel very distinct from one another. I was going to highlight one of them as a favorite example, but I genuinely can't pick between them. The adults too are well-rounded and compelling, which I feel is often a shortcoming of horror in an academic setting (is that what dark academia is? no one will tell me). And of course Delphine herself is quite compelling; a little odd, very intense, and eminently sympathetic, her dynamic with Eden is fresh, engaging, and believable.

One thing I really want to highlight about this story is its willingness to engage with real-life messiness that is often elided in ghost stories and love stories. The mechanics of the supernatural are not well understood in this story, and no tomes of ancient lore exist to guide the protagonists. Their methods of interfacing with the supernatural are cobbled together from their own intuition and their vague impressions of the occult from pop culture and religious mysticism, and their efficacy is neither reliable nor consistent. Similarly, the story is not afraid of engaging with the fragility and volatility of young love, the way it can feel all-consuming and eternal in one moment and fizzle out the next. This sort of messiness always appeals to me in fiction, and it is remarkably rare outside of deliberate genre subversions, so I was absolutely thrilled with it here.

I would recommend The Narrow without hesitation to anyone who likes ghost stories. I would also recommend it for its exploration of abuse in a variety of forms, and for its depiction of the aftermath of said abuse. Take that same recommendation as a content warning, though, and I'll toss in a more specific one for involuntary drug use.

[dulcidyne]

#3 for the book asks please. My tbr doesn’t need to be bigger than it is, but I’m prepared to add to it.

Ohh, Sloth thank you for the ask!!!

3. What were your top five books of the year? Oh, this is going to be hard to narrow down but I believe in myself! 1. Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir This whole series is 10/10 for me with the added extra deliciousness that is a beautiful anatomy-centric prose. Harrow adds to this by featuring more of the sci-fi elements, an even more unreliable narrator somehow, and a soup scene that will live forever in my brain, it was so incredible. I did two formats on all three books in this series: audiobook while at work and then when I got home, I'd read my digital copy (very helpful for annotation) because I could not put it down. I also bought physical copies so I could do a re-read without my blocks of highlighted texts.

2. And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Housseini I listened to this on audiobook at work first and ended up sobbing and sniffling pathetically into my surgical mask, which was embarrassing, so I finished it at home reading my digital copy. So many of these vignettes haunt me to this day, they're so beautiful. This may be one of my favorite books of all time, it was so incredible and I need a physical copy asap.

3. The Witchwood Knot by Olivia Atwater I love every single one of her Regency era fairytales. The exploration of class and gender dynamics just brings so much to the time period, and I love how her protagonists can come from all walks of life. I was just so invested in the main characters in this, the paired traumas brought out everything I love bout Olvia Atwater's universe 4. Babel by R.F. Kuang I don't think it was flawless, I wish there was a bit more focus on the characters but it more than made up for that in the world building and magic system. I mentioned how I loved the translation of the historic into sci-fi in An Unkindness of Ghosts and this book did something very similar but into fantasy. I don't think it got the balance as right as Rivers Solomon did, but to me the critique of academia's power structures made up for it. 5. Really, an Unkindness of Ghosts belongs here but since I already talked about it, I'm going to put #6 here instead: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. I love the narrative voice and diction, I love her prose, and I love her characters. Poisonwood Bible is maybe my favorite book of all time (up there at least), so I am very biased to like anything Kingsolver writes. It was a bit long, I'll admit haha. Ask Meme

[aronarchy]

(completely incorrect assessment of causality, how laws are passed, etc + probably incorrectly interpreted/debunked/nonexistent studies aside): can we kill this myth already? (yes there are more than two such choices, “lolicon works as an ‘outlet’ for potential sexual abusiveness” is definitely wrong, but “it makes it worse” is also very wrong.) fantis rely on these bland input-x-output-y functions w/no nuance, no curiosity, no further social analysis (same as the general psych/criminological mindset) bc easy way to avoid actual intellectual rigor & looking at the world around you with more honest eyes.

“porn escalation” is a myth pushed by the evangelical lobby, following older puritanical ideas of sexual assault & abuse being a product of irresistible biological urges / sexual deviancy / overly high sex drive / unmediated fantasy & not their own fault, a product of their own values & will to power but some external influence (e.g. “satan”). patriarchs & abusers & others invested in upholding this social order have fucking incredible propaganda systems and part of that is how such bias has infiltrated academia and research and perceptions thereof. c.f. “Rational Science(tm)” from the Right, w/“you’re just Denying The Facts” if you argue they’re wrong or are motivated by bias or are fueling biases.

[coruscatingdust]

i saw your recent post about philosophy in academia, and as an undergraduate philosophy student, i completely agree with you ! looking at your profile, you seem incredibly cool, and i hope all is going well with your research — virtue ethics is absolutely fascinating !!

thank you so much for your kind words! Academic philosophy can be disenchanting and disappointing at times but there are those rare moments when you come across really engaging writers and those who are invested in asking the bigger questions, even when these discussions center on topics like language and logic (like Wittgenstein or some philosophers influenced by Wittgenstein like Stanley Cavell or Cora Diamond). I just wish there was more room to think and write creatively and explore issues connected with how we live and see the world, what dispositions and attitudes we can cultivate a virtuous way of coming to know the world.

For me, studying philosophy means being able to ask clear and honest questions about the ways we see the world. In one sense, it provides us different lenses which enable us to make sense of our actions, our thoughts, our purposes, and the events that happen in the world. But it also provides us with the tools to critique and re-examine the very lenses we have adopted.

It helps us reconfigure the relationship between concepts, definitions, and theories that are so often be employed without a real consideration of just what the words and concepts we use really mean. It is a way of delineating the excess of arbitrary language, to acknowledge the limits of our perception, and to have epistemic conscientiousness regards to beliefs we form and hold. All this, I think, matters to the type of life we are trying to live and the person we try to become.

This is what motivated me to study platonic virtue epistemology. I’m very much interested in what Iris Murdoch calls the “pictures” we use to make sense of ourselves and the world and how we coming to see reality lovingly and without our egoistic biases is a lifelong process of ethical attention to the real outside of ourselves. I am driven by such an ideal which comes into practice by the virtue of humility and curiosity. I also think the idea of the Good and eros in Plato has epistemic significance for shaping our desires and motivation for truth, and that the transformation of our consciousness can enable us to live a life of eudaimonia and harmony.

[neonscandal]

Hi ....Do you mind if I ask your top 5 (or top 10) favorite moments from any anime (can be series or movies)? Sorry if you have already answered this ask before.....

This is an incredible ask which inherently will come with some serious spoilers! This was also really tricky trying to determine what makes something my favorite - was it the funniest? The craziest? The biggest plot twist? I used the benchmark of what moments do I wish I could watch for the very first time, all over again. I broke the difference with eight, hope you don't mind!

⚠️ Spoiler Warning covers the following series (specific benchmarks will be given) for Sk8 the Infinity, Attack on Titan, My Hero Academia, Yuri on Ice, Trigun, Fushiigi Yuugi.

SK8 the Infinity S1 E6, allusion to S1 E10

Starting off light! One would assume that one of the most iconic scenes in Sk8 is the slap heard round the world but I found that more heartbreaking than anything. My favorite moment of Sk8 is easily Miya cockblocking Joe on the beach because what a flex, first of all. Secondly, the build up and subsequent (unknowing) teamwork of our favorite motley crew of skaters? 😘👌🏾 Chef's Kiss and *peak* comedy.

Attack on Titan S3 E16

I could talk at length about the exquisite exposition of Attack on Titan and how each rewatch sprouts new easter eggs of foreshadowing as the world unfurls for the viewer. But the truth is, out of the entire series, the moment that I would want to rewatch for the first time is Erwin's rallying speech in Shinganshina. In addition to inspiring goosebumps and anxiety when I hear it, it is a perfect storm of emotions as concurrent events unfolding are all coming to a head. It's a wretched life and a hopeless situation made worse by the all-or-nothing corner they've been backed into. The standoff is more poignant as it's a reckoning of Erwin's own past of valiantly using others as cannon fodder if only as a means to a strategic end. A man we now know to be possessed by the obsession of proving his father right, presses forward ceaselessly while never seeing a future beyond that and we're never given the time to fully digest that. "A Perfect Game", indeed. The speech manages to be heart wrenching every time. Including when the dub pops up in my music library.

Yuri on Ice S1 E10

Hot Take: Every sports anime is a BL. You cannot convince me otherwise. BUT THIS WORK OF ART!? Literally the exception that proves the rule. Episode 7 was GOOD. Like, "ohmygod-ohmygod-ohmygod, IT'S HAPPENING!" good. Episode 10 was a cultural reset ✨ and what I wouldn't give to see it for the first time all over again. From the viewer's perspective, Viktor picked up his life with one foot in a relationship when he decided to coach Yuuri. It was alluded to, hinted at, his susceptibility of Yuuri's affection should it ever be thrown his way but in an almost detached, puckish manner. A manner that frazzled Yuuri so he could never take it seriously. So what a comedy of errors to know, after finally finding a working rhythm and even exchanging rings, that Yuuri was the one who made the first move!? OMG. Iconic plot twist, truly. The bonus evidence of his champagne fueled revelry is one of my all time favorite bonus sequences.

My Hero Academia S3 E18, S6 E9 and Heroes Rising (Indirect Manga Spoiler Ch 337)

Maybe a bit biased since I'm most plugged into this series at the moment (I like GIFs and only get 9 a post), but here's a treasure trove of moments! I've recently gotten my niece and nephew into MHA and rewatched everything from S1 to the current season and all movies while seeing how they digest everything. I tried to tweet about it because it's truly novel seeing things for the first time through their eyes but didn't really keep up with it. Since I'm reading the manga (and need to pick back up on posting about it), I have a renewed perspective on certain moments so see below:

Iida rallying Aoyama from the figurative edge during the provisional exam and how it inspired Aoyama to sacrifice himself so someone he perceives as noble can be slingshot across the finish line. Humorous of course since we know Iida was like a hair away from murder a season or so ago. When this last ditch effort unites the rest of Class 1A and serves as an impetus for them all to pass together? BRUH. With what we've seen of Aoyama and what we later learn, rewatching this scene actually made me a bit more emotional as it added a layer to his duress that we don't comprehend just yet.

Bakugo's hero moment which mirrored Midoriya's own hero origin story. Don't get me wrong, Bakugo is no stranger to sacrificing himself. He and Midoriya make it a habit of saving one another. But this specific moment marks itself indelibly as deliberate insight into Bakugo's character growth because we hear his thoughts in that moment which seems to mirror Midoriya's. TBH, the episode was good but reading that for the first time? Phenomenal. It felt more impactful somehow.

The final fight scene against Nine with everyone coordinating to use their quirks to the best of their abilities while knowing they were outclassed. Bakugo and Midoriya seamlessly working together and then the (non-canonical IG) transfer of OFA with Deku risking quirklessness again and Bakugo warning him against it. *Cue Sarah McLachlan-esque soundtrack.*

Trigun (OG Run) S1 E 23

I slipped down the Adult Swim to Toonami pipeline of anime so Trigun was one of the first anime I fell in love with and kicked off an enduring adoration for characters voiced by Johnny Yong Bosch. Wolfwood's showdown with Evergreen and the subsequent scene at the church as he makes his peace before dying forever altered my brain chemistry. On the one hand, I loved Wolfwood's character as he played off of Vash so well, comedically. At odds but similarly aligned in the greater good though the means to the end weren't always in sync. I could appreciate the dissonance of his character, holy man who kills; unsavory priest, etc. So I would have been sad to see him go either way, but the life he imagined for himself as he was dying? Knife in the heart. Knowing that ultimately, legendary gunslinger Vash the Stampede made such a visceral impression on this ne'er do well priest, moreso than the God he served and that that was his undoing? Twist that knife, baby. That last bit I can appreciate much better as an adult where, as a kid, I could understand how moved I was without realizing the complexity of it. Truly devastating.

Fushigi Yugi S1 E33

I'm realizing that a lot of my favorite characters tend to be really irreverent and rough around the edges. These very same characters tend to have compelling depth beyond their surface level brashness and character growth that stays with me. Such is the case with the graceful and beautiful Nuriko of the Suzaku warriors. As a kid and also for a series of that period, I could understand that Nuriko had a rich complexity and appreciate the relief that they were accepted wholeheartedly by Miaka and the warriors. The character was so deeply steeped in grief that it defined them and muddled their identity over the course of their life. Upon finding a new mission, they were able to come into themselves but only by slowly letting that grief go. So it is ironic that this person, shortly after finding peace in who they were, was marked for a death that would critically galvanize Miaka and the rest of the warriors to carry on and see the mission through to the very end. This episode became a core memory and I distinctly remember bawling.

[victimhood]

As predicted, dear old predictable me is procrastinating again, but I’m fixated on the fact that @itsrottenvibes proposed that within my football!AU Yooker shippers call Yusuf/Nicky “Yucky” WHICH IS THE MOST AMAZING THING AND 100% ACCURATE

This is three Inception levels deep nonsense (The Old Guard > football alternate universe > “RPF” within this football universe) but I’m OBSESSED with thinking what the in-universe fandom is like. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out The Beautiful Game before you @ me.

Yusuf/Booker: MAJOR FANDOM SHIP. This ship attracts fans from rival clubs. Even AC Milan fans hate-follow Yooker on IG just to view their stories. There are wonderful, moderate Yooker fans, and then there are some SERIOUS DELULUS who comment on every IG post that Yusuf and Booker make with 4th wall breaking bad shit like “THIS REMINDS ME OF CHAPTER 14 OF [YOOKER FIC WITH 1000 KUDOS ON AO3]

Booker’s fanon characterization: major yt boi woobie, he is somehow the main character in 75% of Yooker fics, reflecting the unconscious racial biases of the fandom. He is granted all sorts of magical powers and leading roles in the most egregious AUs. Top or Bottom Booker discourse is something you never want to touch with a 10 foot pole. Top!Booker fans basically never interact with Bottom!Booker fans since the Great Fanwars of bad discourse.

Yusuf’s fanon characterization: depends on which part of fandom you look at, Yusuf is either the Gary Stu of Gary Stus, or some sort of Manic Pixie Dream Boy who fixes Broken White Boy Booker and helps him achieve his dreams. The most popular Yusuf POV fic is one in which he is a quasi-James Bond type character, and Booker is some sexy villain that seduces him on a mission. Fans with a Yusuf bias tend to be...the coolest part of fandom, and they have an incredible skillset in producing gifs/edits/media from clips of Yusuf floating on the internet (that Armani ad has been milked to death 28937428934 ways)

Yusuf/Nichi, aka “Yucky”: only Fandom Olds ship this, and even so it’s kinda a rarepair since so many left the fandom. It was a bit of a thing back in 2021, but like, there was this post about how problematic the Yucky BNFs were and everyone did a hate-pile on and since then Yucky’s kinda...an icky ship no one wants to touch.

The Yucky fans are disturbingly literate, and write incredibly prescient fics, but also kinda weirdly elitist about it. A group of Yucky fans, who apparently attend Ivy League-level colleges, made an exclusive community of fanfic writers where they write fics for each other. It’s this elitist group that attracted the hate. A lot of the good Yucky fics have either been deleted or orphaned on AO3, because their authors work in governmental-level positions now. The best Yucky fanfic is a space academia AU written by an actual PhD candidate and the quality of that fic is like...Margaret Atwood style prose.

Nicky’s fanon characterization: The Yucky writers write Nicky as a thoughtful, intelligent human being (despite...the misspelled tattoo and Eurotrash haircuts), which the Yooker shippers think is extremely OOC. These days (in the year of our lord 2027), Nicky is often the stock villain in Yooker fics. In Yooker fics, he is always some sort of weird possessive ex-boyfriend (of Booker, surprise twist), bc Booker is the woobie that needs to be saved from the evil captain by Yusuf.

Booker/Lykon: the cute happy corner of the most sensible fans. They know they’re not a big ship, but they love each other, and they write the cutest fics and they’ve offended no one.

Rachida/Booker: this pairing surged in popularity during the Women’s World Cup, for that enemies to lovers dynamic. However, as a het ship, just doesn’t reach the heights of Yooker, and is kinda seen as a crack thing.

Nile/Booker: someone wrote this fic after Nile 1 Booker 0 (it’s super porny and basically consists of Nile domming the heck out of Booker), and everyone went crazy over it like OMG THIS IS THE BEST CRACK...two months later WAT THE HECK THIS SHIP IS REAL??? 

Yooker fans pretty much have a total meltdown at the reveal that Nile/Booker is canon. Most go into delulu mode, and write compensatory fanfics in which Booker is somehow so deeply closeted he marries Nile to prove he is very het, but then he goes back to training at Inter and he can’t resist Yusuf anymore. The worst Yooker fans make Nile a total bitch, but they are just a vocal minority (like 10% of the fandom). Most Yooker fans continue because they are still being fed new content on an extremely regular basis, like when Booker posts photos of shakshuka captioned “brunch with the bestie”. Another 10-15% of the Yooker fandom start writing Nile/Booker/Yusuf threesome fics.

Andy/Booker: ...why. But they exist. They often get hate for the age gap in their ship.

Unfortunately, no one really knows that Quynh/Booker are a thing, although it is known Andy and Quynh are married (I think the...Olympic ski fandom is like...minuscule). But Andy + Quynh/doing kinky things to Booker fics exist on the internet.

[TOG FC SPOILERS BELOW]

On the eve of Yusuf’s wedding to Nichi, Booker gets invited to spa day with Yusuf. Of course he posts about this on his IG “spa day with the bestie”, which sparks 283291321932 Yooker angst fics. The predominant plotstrains are: (1a) Booker has been secretly in love with his best friend the whole time, and finally confessions to his friend at the spa. Yusuf calls off the wedding, and Yooker ride into the sunset. (1b) Yusuf and Booker have been on and off the whole time, and Yusuf confesses to Booker that he has doubts on his compatibility with Nichi. Booker makes a grand romantic gesture, and Yusuf calls off the wedding, and Yooker ride into the sunset. (3) Nichi is forcing Yusuf to marry him for [flimsy reason]. Booker, the hero of the day, swings in to saves Yusuf from abusive big bad Nichi. (4) Blatant pwp hammam porn fic

[pocmuzings]

i know youve answered this in the past and if you dont know any thats fine but do you have any group recs cause im desperate and the tags are so clogged

i do answer this every now and then , but im happy to look for fresh stuff ! as always , check out my REC TAG bc that has some REALLY AMAZING looking things . but i’ve scoured the tags and below are some other rps ive found that get my stamp of approval and look particularly amazing ( good work to all of u !!! )

 @outsidehq : they’re in my rec tag but honestly they deserve another shoutout . the WORK they have put in . it just immerses you straight away into the world and the plot . this is a god damn INCREDIBLE rp , and u guys know i love horror rps but i literally am SO BLOWN AWAY by this one in particular ! couldn’t rec them more !

@effectfm : looks awesome ! until dawn is making a comeback and i LOVE IT ! they’re primarily based on discord i think , but genuinely i have big love for them and their google doc with all the information is thorough and amazing , so even if u’ve never played the game - you totally will know what its about and whats happening ! great job to them , and the writing is fantastic !

@woodshorehq : is genuinely one of the prettiest , most aesthetically pleasing rps ive seen in a hot second like holy SHIT i am OBSESSED with the main ? i’m not usually a multifandom person AT ALL so this just goes to show how amazing the rp looks because i’d genuinely join in a heartbeat ! fantastic work to them , they have converted me !!!

@opalshq​ : what a fucking incredibly extensive , detailed , well thought out rp and plot and process ! this is fantastic looking dark academia rp , and honestly the standards have been lifted just looking and reading over everything ! wow ! im semi biased but also not because this should be everyone’s latest obsession !!!! so much hardwork and dedication put into it , and it shows ! its so beautiful . . . JEEZ ! i hope u all are clicking on it and checking it tf out and admiring it with me !

@yateshq : another dark academia rp i’m now obsessed with ! just cute , super beautiful and looking to be super diverse too ! a great layout and a super nice admin ! what more could u want ?? the plot is written amazingly , and i love the juiciness of it all ! drama WILL ensure there !

@ensemblehq : im certain i’ve rec’d it before but i don’t care ! what an amazing rp . im consistently blown away by it , and everytime i click on the main i fall in love all over again ! i literally love a skeleton rp and its so rare to have EVERY skeleton be so amazing to read about and learn and want to apply for ? like PHEW the talent of the admins !

@turquoisehq : i LOVE subplot rps and im so glad to see them making a comeback !  i dearly missed seeing them ! also the taken list looks really good to me , and thats a BIG thing for me so good job to the admins and players for fostering a diverse place , bc thats a big deal !

@sclubhq : the subplots and character plots are SO well written and intricately-laid-together . i love it . the overall vibe of the rp is just so weirdly Summer-y and comforting . like i feel relaxed just looking at the rp ?? utterly obsessed with the plots and tbh i just wanna watch off the side like a Freak and see what happens to everyone and all the muses bc it reads so well and so juicily !!!

@merryteasers : its just a teaser blog so far but who knew id so easily get suckered into a robin hood inspired rp ?? i did NOT know this was smth id be interested and needed until right this second  ! absolutely can’t wait to see more of them in the tags , because they’re doing a wonderful job and have definitely gotten me hooked thus far !

@littlepondhq: i wanna SCREAM this is such a cute rp ? like so so so cute and sweet looking im obsessed with it wow . skeleton rp ? a last summer before going off the college setting ? this has g written all over it ! i LOVE these sort of plots , about friendship and romance and SUMMER , and i love love LOVE when rps can get u hooked easily and just feel Nostalgic and thats what i definitely feel checking out this rp !

@colloportushq : this is a very unique hp looking rp and i am in AWE of that bc genuinely its a very hard thing to make a hp rp a bit Different and they have done EXACTLY that for this rp  . plus the skeletons are written incredibly well , they read like poetry , its so beautiful ? i have fallen in love with the world and the writing and every skeleton , genuinely BIG CLAPS to this group ! 

@crownshqs : if you love royalty and period type of rps then this seems like the holy grail ! i’ve never EVER seen a rp with so much information and story mapped out . its INCREDIBLE , i don’t know how u guys did it but wow ! theres a whole world and universe built here and its so strong and incredibly well written !!! 

@xmenfm : i am so excited because i LOVE xmen so much and i am so so happy to see an xmen rp in the tags !!! and they look amazing ! the colour scheme is CHEFS KISS ! the taken fcs with the canon characters ? literally shake me to my core , this is the most incredible list of characters i’ve ever seen , i am QUAKING AND SHAKING i am utterly in awe , i think im in love with this entire group

@alonghq : friends buying two houses together , next to each other ??? being best friends ? doing best friend things ? god i love rps based entirely on friendship , thats so god damn POWERFUL i LOVE IT theres so much u can DO HERE in this rp , bc its all about friendship and everyone knows everyone and the skeletons are DELIGHTFUL !!! big love !

[funkymbtifiction]

Si-dom/sensing types

SUBMITTED by sharly85

Hi, I really enjoy your blog and it’s especially helped revive my interest in mbti recently and now enneagram too. This isn’t really a question but I thought I’d submit it regardless. Anyway, I saw your post the other day where you mentioned that it was really hard to grasp Se and Si since a lot of the books are written by Ns. So as an ISFJ, I just wondered if I could help and give at least one person’s first-hand Si perspective. Obviously I can’t speak for all S users, least of all Se users, and my other functions will play a role in how I use it, but I thought it might change how you see Si a bit :) Also, I’ve been recently trying to learn about enneagram and I think I’m a 6w5 with sp but I’m not 100% sure (ironic I know) but that might be worth considering in your interpretation of my description. Si>Fe>Ti>Ne So the base descriptions of S and Si in general always talk about how S’s rely on using their 5 senses to take in information. Whilst this is true, I personally think there’s a lot more to it than that. When it comes to learning and revising for an exam, I would definitely say that I use a lot of strategies that relate to my senses. For example, I make a lot of posters, write in a range of coloured pens, and can still remember a song about mitosis I haven’t listened to in about 4 years. But for me, the more important thing I found out about Si (I can’t remember where from unfortunately) was that information is taken in through your own series of biases. This doesn’t mean that I have a refusal to see or hear some thing I don’t agree with, but it means that what I remember has to have struck a chord with me in some way. Being a feeling type, this usually means it has to emotionally impact me in one way or another (although not exclusively), but it is a lot easier for me to remember it if I was emotionally impacted by it, or equally, if I know I will be negatively impacted later if I don’t remember it.  That being said, as I am an ISFJ, the Si-Ti loop can very much allow me to remember things that don’t emotionally impact me, if I can logically organise them in my brain. I like to think of the Si-Ti loop as a filling system in my brain. Si takes in information, and Ti then tries to categorise and organise that information for memory recall. When I want to recall something, I go to the folder for that category and then have access to all the previous things I have categorised in there. I think there are stereotypes that a lot of ISFJs are not very smart, and NTs are the smart ones for example, but because of the Si-Ti loop, I have always had incredible memory allowing me to be in the top 10% of the class. But as I mentioned earlier, as whatever Si chooses to take in has to go through a series of personal biases, if an Si user is not interested in academic learning, then they would struggle to remember the information because it doesn’t impact them. I enjoyed learning and succeeding academically, so I was invested in learning and hence had reason to remember. And because of my functions, I was able to do this with pretty good success.    Another key thing that S’s are described as is being detail-orientated. I think some N’s can believe that they care about details but I really don’t know if they realise the extent to which an S can be detail-orientated. To put it into perspective, I was recently helping proof read my partner’s essay (he’s a suspected INTJ but came out as Ixxx when I got him to take tests) but I was starting to frustrate him because I noticed every single double space in the document. I really don’t think that most N’s would actually notice this level of detail in something. Because of this level of detail-orientation, it can become very easy to become quite perfectionist, especially for a repeated task that I have completed “perfectly” before. Once I have noticed a detail, I can’t ignore it. It starts to stand out like a neon sign, eating away at me. It doesn’t matter if no one else notices, I’ve noticed it, and so if it’s something I’ve noticed and don’t like, I have to change it/fix it. The same applies to me with having a piece of rubbish fall out of my pocket. I don’t think a lot of N’s would realise the rubbish fell out, and some people (S or N) may not care. But you can be damn sure that I will be chasing that down the street because I know it’s there now. But this detail orientation can definitely cause me to be unable to see the wood for the trees sometimes. I can become absorbed by even a single detail and can find it very hard to take a step back and look at the bigger picture when this happens. So I often need an external source to help pull me out of this tunnel-vision. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I have proof-read this and made minor changes or spotted typos but, it’s a lot.  Detail orientation can be in any aspect of the S’s life, and doesn’t just have to be with regard to work. For SFs it can often be with regard to the people they care about. I recall you mentioning something in another post recently about this, but an N can have an uncanny guess about what someone is thinking or feeling without being able to explain how they got to that conclusion. In contrast, as an SF, if I want to know how someone is feeling, I pick up on tiny facial expressions, body language and speech patterns that I’ve seen before to understand. Because of this, it makes my ability to do so more accurate the better I know someone, but as most humans have similar overall facial expressions, it is a relatively transferable skill even to people I don’t know well. I think as a good general distinguisher between an S and an N is that if the person in question can explain their process into a conclusion, they are likely to be an S, even if the conclusion is wrong (e.g. “you have your sad face on”). If they can’t explain at all their mental process and can somehow still get it right, they are probably an N (e.g. “you just seemed upset”).   I think one of the “party tricks” other types (particularly Ns) see me do is remember where an object is. I largely attribute this to growing up with my mother (probably ENFJ) who was very forgetful when it came to small objects. She’d walk in, drop her keys somewhere (but it would never be dropped in the same place twice) and then less than 5 minutes later she would have no clue where they are. But because I’m both a helper type and detail orientated, I can be very good at noticing where things are. In my own home, it is even easier for me because whilst nothing is perfectly tidy, everything has a place it should be (I presume this is SJ combination), and so for me I can almost ignore the background of what usually lives there to find the out of place object. In a house where I don’t have as much control over where things go it can be harder, but I will still probably notice your keys or your phone partially sticking out from under a coat that was thrown on a chair or something, especially if I know the object has significance. I.e. I know that you need your keys to leave the house and you will become stressed if you can’t find them, so it will reduce the disturbance of harmony (Fe) if I can recall where the object is and shortcut the process. But, that means that when I lose something, I can very easily catastrophise the scenario (Inf Ne) and think it’s lost forever because I would know where it was and it’s not there (some times it is still where I think it should be, but as the panic sets in, my Ne takes over worrying about the fact I’ve lost it, preventing good perceptive skills at actually seeing it). As I’ve eluded to, for an Si particularly, environment is a big factor. Introverts already struggle with overstimulating environments as is, but for an Si-dom, I am particularly sensitive to an environment. I often find myself somewhat like a meerkat when I’m in a new place, even if the new place is just a new room in a building I know. I will spend a lot of time looking around trying to notice things around me and basically memorise it, should I need to reference it later. Likewise, if I am walking out and about, I often find myself looking all over, noticing how the light shines through the trees, the pretty coloured flowers in someone’s front garden or the sound of the birds tweeting. So I am always aware of my environment no matter where it is. Once I have some familiarity with a place, it makes it much more comfortable for me to spend time there, because I don’t need to activate the “meerkat-mode” and look around constantly - I already know the environment (Si-Ti memory). But, that means that I will sure as hell notice if something has significantly changed in a place between me being there previously (as I mentioned earlier, once I have the background established, any changes become much more obvious to me). Equally, if the environment I am in is overstimulating, it can be really uncomfortable to be in because I am constantly surveying the environment and can’t focus on whatever it was I was supposed to be doing in that place. I find it really challenging especially as an introvert to be in a loud crowded place because there’s too much to take in, and being an introvert especially with Si and Ti, I find it much easier to process thoughts in a quieter space. So I often end up taking a step back in group conversations in busy environments because I have to put all my energy into focusing on listening to try and minimise over-stimulation.  Another major aspect of Si for me is learning through hands on experience. I think you mentioned recently that S’s are typically the ones who will become world experts in one thing whereas N’s are better at becoming Jack of all trades, and I think that can be true for some but N’s ability to pull abstract pieces of information together can also help N’s in academia in a way that S’s can’t. But the way that an S gets to that point is through hands on experience. Every time I do something that I want to be able to do, I will unconsciously remember, and will also more consciously remember any mistakes I made doing so. Then the next time I do it, I will be ever so slightly better at it, using what worked previously and avoiding what didn’t. But repeat this process as many times as I do it, until somehow I know exactly what to do every single time with very little variation[. For me this is particularly true with fine-motor skills and a few really obscure skills. The one example that springs to mind is I was with an ENFP and an INFJ and the ENFP told us about a tongue twister she wanted us to try: “Tesco, Tesco Metro, Tesco Extra, Tesco Express” (I’m British so Tesco is a supermarket chain and those are the different types of stores they have). But the ENFP told us to try saying it like 5 times in a row quickly. The first few times, I was ok at it, but I was either way too slow, or I stumbled on the words if I went faster. But after each time I tried the tongue twister, I got better until I was able to say it the best out of all of us. It was like watching evolution in front of you, and this was only across the space of 10-15 minutes. Whist I can’t say for sure, this is why I reckon that some STs get really good at being things like mechanics. It’s hands on so they learn well every time they have to fix a car, but equally they probably pick up on subtle noises or visual cues to figure out what’s wrong with a car. Each time they do, they subconsciously remember something about the car and then remember the outcome so that next time they don’t have to figure it out and they can shortcut the process. 

I think the need for routine that a lot of S’s feel (particularly SJs) also comes from this idea of hands on learning and basing everything you do on experience. When an SJ has figured out that some combination of events works, they don’t want to let it go because an alternate method might not work (it might work, but poor N functions means that it can difficult for an S to accurately predict). At a previous job, I used to walk to work every day, and I reckon if you were able to track every foot step I took to work every day and overlay them, they would almost be identical with an identical overall path. There were other places I could have crossed the road (and there’s no jaywalking in the UK so I could cross a road anywhere I want) but I didn’t. I could have walked on the other side of the road just coz, but I didn’t. I had decided that this was the optimal route, so that was the route I took. No need to consider other routes because this works and I know it does, so why change it? A routine that has been established and is known to work and requires a lot less mental energy for an S(J) than trying to figure out what will happen if you do something else, so it makes their life easier. Because of this, when something comes up that requires me to disrupt my personal routine, I will automatically feel negative about it, even if I will enjoy the thing or know what to expect from the thing. It disrupts my routine which normally makes me feel happy and comfortable so I already have to put more effort into thinking about the event than if it didn’t. Traditions go along the same lines. SJs feel comfortable with traditions because they are essentially oddly specific routines that come into play when certain conditions are met. The SJ can predict what will happen when the conditions are met because it has previously been established, and they like that predictability.  I think the last thing I think is really important for S’s is being in touch with your body, especially for Si’s. A lot of N’s seem to constantly be confused when something isn’t quite right with their body and they don’t seem to be very good at putting two and two together about it e.g. I ate fast food all day and then had a full bar of chocolate and now I have an upset stomach, or another classic one is when N’s say they feel really tired but when you talk to them, you find out they have forgotten to eat for the last 6 hours. For me, whilst I’m not a doctor so I can’t diagnose what’s wrong, I feel like I am a lot more aware of it. To put it into perspective, I once knew that I would vomit over an hour before I actually did. When I say as an Si user that I am in tune with my body, I mean it. To me it is a disturbance to my internal homeostatic environment, so some thing being off is a big deal. But as such, it impacts me a lot more in my day to day life. I can’t focus on work if I’m hungry because I am so aware of it. Whereas N’s can probably focus until they pass out if some thing has caught their interest. The combination for me of knowing how my body feels and liking routine was repeatedly able to bamboozle the ENFP and INFJ I mentioned before, when I brought essentially the same lunch to work every day. To them, they couldn’t see how I could enjoy repeatedly eating the same thing. But for me, I knew it satisfied me for the rest of the day but not so much that was uncomfortable, was relatively healthy and cheap and the repetition was soothing rather than boring. The ENFP was particularly bad at judging the right amount of food she needed or wanted but didn’t have the same ability to learn from her mistakes and find a formula that did. She just brought something new each day and hoped for the best - something very odd to me. Sorry that this ended up being so long. I just didn’t want to miss any details out (pun intended). Feel free to use any of this that you need in any way. Even if you don’t use it in a post, I hope it helps your own understanding for typing people etc. :)

ENFP Mod: Thanks! I enjoyed reading it, and am posting it, since it may help others understand Si-dom better. :)

[merrilyhappily]

hey y’all since we all have some spare time on our hands, here’s a list of my top ten favorite books/series!! (trigger warning on some [read: a lot] of these!)

1. the goldfinch by donna tartt (10/10)

classic tartt prose, homoerotic subtext, drugs, and art thievery! theo is an excellently fleshed out protagonist, and boris pavlikovsky is one of the best-written gray/amoral characters i’ve ever read. the movie is subpar, but the book is fantastic and forever a favorite! the dark academia aesthetic is always a plus.

2. tell the wolves i’m home by carol rifka brunt (10/10)

this book ripped my heart out and stomped all over it. june is such a real and raw character, and her relationship with her sister struck a very deep chord for me. again, themes of the art world here, but the story is mostly about a girl navigating grief and becoming herself while becoming aware of the complexities of the people around her.

3. the heart’s invisible furies by john boyne (8/10)

i may be biased as a catholic school kid, but i think this book has a lot of really valuable commentary on the church and how it sways the public. it’s equal parts heartbreaking and hilarious and one of my most thoroughly annotated books. it follows a gay man in ireland throughout the entirety of his life and has stuck with me for a really long time after reading.

4. all the light we cannot see by anthony doerr (8/10)

set during the second world war, this book follows a blind french girl and a german orphan and looks at how the war affects them. it’s an excellent look at morality and deals with werner’s feelings of guilt after going to be trained to join the nazis in a way that’s very raw and gives insight to how humans can be capable of atrocity. marie-laure is an incredible female protagonist, and the writing of her point of view forces a different kind of visualizing and does a very good job of painting the world around her even without her sight. it starts kind of slow, but the ending is well worth the read. i had a lot of feelings when i finished it.

5. the chaos walking trilogy by patrick ness (9/10)

one of the greatest uses of point of view i have ever read. seriously. i fell in love with these books so fast. it’s set on an alien planet in which all women have supposedly died and men can hear each other’s thoughts. todd and viola are fantastic main characters and turn the twelve-year-old chosen one trope completely on its head. sci-fi, action, and a little bit of romance but the wholesome, heart-warming, young love kind. (bonus points for a diverse cast of uniquely motivated female characters and a talking dog!)

6. last night i sang to the monster by benjamin alire saenz (9/10)

i first started reading saenz in my freshman year when i picked up aristotle and dante and from there on out made it my goal to read his complete works. i haven’t gotten there quite yet, but so far, last night i sang to the monster is my favorite. it’s horribly sad but (spoiler alert) it does have a happy ending, which i think at this point i’ve come to expect from benjamin alire saenz. it’s about a boy named zack who wakes up in rehab and has no recollection of how he got there or who put him there. i devoured this book in two days. it’s a pretty quick read, but it leaves a lot to think about.

7. the walls around us by nova ren suma (7/10)

i haven’t really seen people talk about this book much online. it’s a lot to unpack but involves an all-female juvenile prison, ballerina drama, poisoned peas, and a murder most foul. it’s very, very dark and at times upsetting, but i loved it all the same.

8. the miseducation of cameron post by emily m danforth (8/10)

i was skeptical about reading this book for a long time because i, like a lot of people, have a really hard time with stories about conversion therapy, but i decided to take a chance on this book and was really glad i did. it’s a very powerful insight into the power of friendship and taking control of your own destiny as well as learning to love and accept yourself and come to terms with your past. in short, it really upset me at parts, but in all it was wonderful. after reading, also, the movie stars chloe grace moretz and is very good.

9. all the bright places by jennifer niven (7/10)

you’re probably already at least semi-aware of this book because of the netflix movie, but if you haven’t read it, i highly recommend it. even if you have seen the movie, it really does the book no justice. it’s a story about mental health and how it affects both those living with mental illnesses and the people around them. it’s about friendship and loss and love and, above-all, resilience. it also paints a very critical but altogether fond view of the rural midwest.

10. the proxy duology by alex london (8/10)

proxy is set in a capitalist dystopia in which lower class people are made into proxies for the upper class and are forced to suffer punishment for the upper class’s crimes. one such proxy is syd, knox’s proxy, and knox has just killed someone. this is a great breakdown of classism and privilege with the added bonus of a sci-fi adventure with a mlm, moc main character.

[rivkahstudies]

hey Rivkah! I've seen you post about having career goals related to linguistic anthropology and you've also posted that discrimination, especially linguistic discrimination, is one of the worst things about society your opinion. I was wondering if you had any ideas about how one could counter linguistic discrimination, either as part of a career or on the side. I'm especially interested in hearing your thoughts on how one might be able to do this outside of doing ling anth in academia.

Hi honey! I’m really honored to receive this question because it’s so insightful and dedicated to something I’m incredibly passionate about. It overlaps with sociology, law, and politics. So, first I’ll talk about what I’m personally planning to do outside of/past academia, and then I’ll talk about other avenues one can take, both on a large and small scale.

Right now, my goals are to be either a medical or legal interpreter, and I’m leaning toward the latter. What that means, for those that don’t know, is that I want to go through a graduate degree or certificate program in order to be certified to translate specific languages orally in a highly specialized workplace, namely a hospital or a courtroom.

The reason why I’m so passionate about this job is because, while we have laws such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (which prohibits discrimination based on “national origin,” which is closely tied to the native language you speak) we still see a lot of prejudice and violence against people who choose to speak their native/a different language on their own terms in public. 

More specifically, what I aim to do is make it easier for non-native English speakers (especially, but not limited to, immigrants) receive the same services all people have a right to but they may have difficulty getting, such as medical attention or accurate legal representation. Interpretation is incredibly high stakes in my eyes because you have to translate automatically, in person, with a lot of pressure on you to do it quickly and accurately. And that’s really scary, but to me, what’s scarier is that someone might not be getting the care they need or be understood in a courtroom, and that could impact their health, their safety, their freedom, or their ability to get justice.

While someone might not necessarily be actively sabotaged in a courtroom or a hospital, those are high profile environments with a lot of pressure, and not a lot of time for patience and forgiveness if you’re trying to get through a case or to the next patient. The odds are stacked against someone who doesn’t have the specific vocabulary needed to accurately describe their symptoms or deliver their testimony. 

And that’s not even counting the ingrained and/or active biases that are found on a serious level in the United States healthcare and justice systems. One of the reasons I’m leaning toward legal interpretation is because I would love to be employed by an organization that protects immigrants from being exploited or abused by our current administration. And that’s so much easier to do when you have bilingual representation to fight with you for your rights.

So, that’s a little background on what I’m specifically studying and fighting for. Here are just a few quick bullets that I always tell people when talking about linguistic discrimination and our role in it.

On a large scale, you can:

Go into a career like mine (law, interpretation, translation, etc) that focuses on combating it.

Support political campaigns and anti-discrimination bill campaigns by volunteering your time to organizations like the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) and RAICES (Refugee And Immigrant Center for Education and legal Services)

SPEAKING OF WHICH, if you’re like me and you use Lyft, you can donate to RAICES with each Lyft Ride. They’ll round up to the nearest dollar on your fee and donate that extra. All you have to do is go to the app and opt in under “Donate.”

Attend conferences, meetings, workshops, and rallies that center around this topic and intersecting ones that you may be interested in.

Volunteer your time to places like housing projects. This is something that I’m on an email/calling list to do. Specifically for me, it’s the Boston Housing Authority, and their volunteers send in a resume, state which languages they have high proficiency in (mine is currently only Spanish) and then attend a training to understand how to do it accurately and with cultural sensitivity. It’s great practice if you need to polish your language skills, are planning to go into a career like mine, or want to use highly-specialized vocabulary. I’ve had to pick up a lot of words that have to do with landlords, rent, housing laws, etc. A lot of the people serviced by the BHA are immigrants or non-native speakers and struggle with things such as reading official letters or making appointments with native English speakers. When they struggle to do this, they’re more likely to get taken advantage of by landlords, evicted unfairly, or mistreated.

Support (through volunteering, donating, etc) indigenous or indigenous-helping groups that combat issues ranging from seizure of land in the Amazon to indigenous groups working on their terms to preserve/revitalize their language(s). It’s really easy for indigenous voices to  

On a small (but equally important) scale, you can:

Call out linguistic discrimination that you see, such as people denying individuals service based on hearing them speak in another language, or unnecessarily bothering them in public. Whenever possible, take video of the incident.

Have polite and informed discussions with people who want to know more about it or might not understand why it’s a problem. This is particularly important to have with kids, and while I was volunteering/teaching Hebrew I made sure that it was integrated into the lessons.

Remain informed on cases involving linguistic discrimination.

Call your representatives when cases come up concerning linguistic discrimination or immigration policy.

Vote for representatives who believe in acceptance and equality for people who come from different backgrounds/languages. 

Boycott/denounce companies and organizations that improperly handle workplace/customer discrimination or instigate it themselves.

Follow native speakers, particularly indigenous individuals and/or minority language speakers, as well as linguistic/social activists and journalists/academics, on your social media feeds (my preferred one to check is Twitter) for updates and opinions on issues that may help you get more informed outside of a classroom/professorial setting.

Be aware of the kinds of resources you should reach out to (administration, superiors, HR, etc) should you find yourself experiencing or watching someone experience linguistic discrimination.

Disclaimer: before stepping into any confrontations, make sure you assess the danger of the situation (this where it’s really good to go to trainings to learn how to handle these kinds of situations). Your goal is to always de-escalate and make the person being discriminated against safer, as well as of course keeping yourself safe too. If there’s violence or anyone is in immediate danger, call the authorities and document whatever you can safely. I’ve only ever seen people being verbally abused for their use of their language(s), but it’s a scary world out there right now.

Overall, it’s really important to remember that this kind of discrimination does not exist in a vacuum and almost always has ties/roots in other forms of discrimination and racism. While it may seem like you’re only doing something small by stepping into and diffusing confrontation/condemning discrimination, you’re having a ripple effect that lets people who linguistically discriminate know that they should be ashamed of their words/actions. 

ALSO, friendly reminder that people who discriminate/harass someone for speaking in another language, having an accent, etc, are not entitled to be put up with due to free speech. That isn’t what it means.

A couple more resources on language discrimination in the workplace:

Language Discrimination & Workplace Fairness

Legal Aid at Work

World Language Education: Preventing Linguistic Discrimination

THIS IS BY NO MEANS ALL-ENCOMPASSING! It is also fed by the researched but incomplete knowledge I have on the subject as a non-expert and a student who is aspiring to meet these kinds of goals. Because I’m a student, I’m always learning, and that means growth must sometimes take the place of changing things I thought I knew and admitting mistakes. 

If you have anything else you want to add to this, please feel free to message me or reply/reblog. 

If you see any inaccuracies, incomplete information, or other concerns/issues with what I’ve written here, please take the time to contact me and educate me! 

I hope this is a good answer and satisfactorily answered your question, @stressfulsemantics ? Please feel free to ask any follow-up or message me for anything you may need!

[managician]

ARC V Anniversary Day 4

Discussion prompt:  Who’s your favorite character(s)?

Hoo boy, I ended up making a top 10 because there’s so many lovable characters in this cast and I want to talk about them all... Warning for incredibly long descriptions as the top goes on (I’m sorry for mobile users)

10. Reira Akaba

Look at this precious bab. Right off the bat I knew I would like them — I have a kind of weakness for child characters (Rua is one of my faves from 5DS too for a reason), but I never actually expected to love them as much as I do right now. Seeing this little afraid kid with no sense of self grow into a person of their own and playing a literal key role in the resolution of the final conflict was so satisfying. 

09. Ray Akaba

Aand naturally, with me loving Reira it probably comes off as no surprise that I love Ray too. Even with the extremely limited screentime, she shot through the roof as one of my favorites. She was no goddess or super powerful entity that had the equal means to fight Zarc, but she did so anyway. And she won. She’s the porter of an incredibly inspiring message and pretty much symbolizes the core of ARC V’s narrative; she saw trouble and she knew cowering in fear would solve nothing, so she took a step forward with courage and believed in her own worth. POINT IS, Ray is awesome.

08. Rin 

Ahh, Rin... It’s one of the few cases where it’s hard for me to articulate what I like about her the most. I actually wasn’t super invested in her when I first finished watching the show, but one of my friends really likes Yugo and Rin and that got me to think more about her beyond her lack of screentime, and I found myself suddenly appreciating her a lot. She has all her pragmatic yet caring personality and goals scattered throughout the show if you pay attention to her interactions with Yugo, and you can actually get a extremely solid grasp on the kind of the person she is — even her deck plays into it (a logical and ruthless Burn Damage deck, which showcases she’s not here for anyone’s bullshit). 

07. Shun Kurosaki

Shun is a fairly biased case for me, I’ll totally admit. I didn’t actually like him that much during my watch of the show though, and it wasn’t until the XYZ/Fusion Arc that I looked at the events of ARC V in retrospective and realised how much Shun had been involved in. I’m a sucker for stoic and ruthless characters learning to trust people again, and Shun fit into the mold perfectly. And he definitely did strike me as cool from the first go, with Rise Falcon’s insane OTK against the LDS Trio back in Standard, so even if I wasn’t actively rooting for his character I wanted to see what direction he’d take. Seeing him grow and finally make peace with the Yuto/Ruri situation at the end of the show made me incredibly happy; I think that he could finally start leaving all the bitterness and pain behind and begin a new journey of hope with his comrades. 

06. Serena

Another case of me being somewhat (okay, really) gay and biased for girls. I loved Serena right from the first go; her pushy and pretty aggressive personality caught my interest, and we got a glimpse of her backstory with Reiji pretty soon after her introduction, which made me feel connected with her very easily. Yet another misguided Academia student — though her arc is completely different compared to say, Sora’s or Dennis’s. She had even less information about the outside world than the rest of the Fusion gang did, and so of course the key for her was learning the truth. Thanks to Yuzu and Shun she was able to check by herself how horrorific her Academia comrades’s actions had been, and she immediately decides to fight against the injustice. There’s something admirable about her relentless courage and will to do what’s right, and she never stops being herself and fighting like she wants to the very bitter end. Pretty inspiring for me, honestly.

05. Reiji Akaba

And we enter Top 5, starting off with Reiji, who is frankly the trickiest character for me on this list. Unlike many people I know I didn’t ever think of him as an evil or dettached rival, because of... His scarf. Yes, his stupid gravity defying-scarf. Red symbolizes heroism in many Japanese shows, so I had the hunch that Reiji would end up acting nicer than he did at the beginning of show. And boy, did he. He’s an incredibly compelling and well-rounded character who is a clear contrast to Yuya’s bright entertainment, and he expresses his emotions in a very subtle way. He’s an unexpected rival who subverts tropes left and right, just like the protagonist; and while it’s clearly a case of the “I Had To Grow Up Too Early” trope, it’s executed so brilliantly well that you can’t help feel sorry for him, even if you don’t particularly like him. ...Which was actually what happened to me, I barely cared for him in my first watch of the show... And then I loved him and suddenly he was in my top favorites. He’s so great.

04. Sawatari Shingo

I’ll say it right from the go, I didn’t ever think a character of Shingo’s type could get me so interested. From the beginning of the show I saw him as Yuya’s ‘rival’ in a purer sense of the word than Reiji; they’re both Entertainment Duelists and have a more direct confrontation in the championship’s Action Duel. But that’s all he really was to me, another showcasing of Entertainment and a fun character to see when he was on screen, nothing else. And yet I found myself taking a deep liking to him when he finally tried to steer his own path; despite being a loud, kind-of comedy relief character if the situation requires for it (somewhat akin to Jounouchi in DM, perhaps), at the same time he’s a quite talented Duelist who enjoys pulling a crowd’s attention towards him. He wants to impress people and that’s something I could relate to in a very intimate way, as much as I preferred Yuya’s ideology. And he grew so much during the BB Arc with Crow too, it was so cute.

Tied for 3rd spot - Yuto and Yuzu Hiragi

Aka... I tried really, really hard to pick one... But I had to give up. Sometimes I say Yuto’s 3rd and Yuzu 2nd and some other days it’s the other way around, and then sometimes I straight up can’t decide. Like today. 

I wasn’t big on Yuto at first at all. He did intrigue me, especially because thanks to him we were introduced to the same-face plot that set off the whole Standard arc in the first place, though that was it. I thought he was cool, a character you can appreciate if he comes up with screen, but don’t actively think of outside of that. Broodingly dark characters tend to piss me off unless they quickly grow on me, which probably added to me not feeling very interested in either him or Shun at the beginning of the show; even with that, I appreciated his rather calm and pacifist nature in comparison to his partner... 

And then Episode 37 happened and I was completely thrown off the charts. His desire to bring smiles to people and to not hurt anyone anymore to the point of refusing to attack Yugo pulled at my heartstrings, and I’m a complete sucker for self-sacrificing characters, so when he protected Yuya at the expense of his own soul and entrusted that desire onto him... I was sold. His influence is rather subtle but shows passionately many times, and I found myself falling in love with his character despite the lack of screentime and dubious characterisation that every XYZ character suffers from; I think he’s the best one out of the trio in that matter, though. And his interactions with Yuzu, Ruri and Yuya are so sweet; overall he’s just a character I can find myself easily toying with and I love his role in the show.

What can I say about Yuzu? She’s my favorite female lead from all YGO series. I found her rather annoying but cute during the first... Ten or so episodes. And then I fell in love with her because holy damn, she’s such an amazing character. She actually Duels, has a beautiful and kickass deck and is deeply involved in the plot from start to end (which is already more than can be said for the other shows), not to mention she’s such an inspiring role model. Yuzu always actively worked to improve herself and it’s refreshing to see her be so open with her feelings and caring for people. She’s so strong and I really enjoyed all the bonds she had with the rest of the cast — when you had half of them going through hell and back to help her, it felt legitimately heartwarming and believable, because she always does her best to forge a connection with people and isn’t afraid to say what she thinks.

She felt like one of the most human characters in the show for me, as her best strength was the power of encouraging and inspiring other people (Yuya, Serena, Yugo just to name a few) rather than being unbeatable or not being allowed to fail. She’s everything and more I could hope from a female lead and she inspires me everyday.

01. Yuya Sakaki

*falls to the ground and sobs*

I can’t even begin to describe how much I love this precious ball of sunshine. Anime protagonists are always without fail a 50/50 chance for me, I either love them with all my soul or I hate them and I’m 200% more invested in other characters. Yuya (un)surprisingly fell into the first category from the very first episode, he’s so adorable and seeing him go on a journey to leave behind his years of bullying and depression and turn into someone he can be proud of is hands down the most inspiring thing in this series. 

He genuinely makes me so happy and his character development is the very thing that made me invested in ARC V in the first place, I will never get enough of what an amazing and compelling protagonist he is. His attitude of trying to stay happy and make the people around him happy as well, but ultimately falling victim to his own emotions and crashing hard against reality is so brutally and openly real that my heart aches just from thinking of it. I’ve learned with him as I watched the show; as an audience we experienced the same happiness, sadness and pain that he went through, and I’m so proud of him for getting so far and never giving up despite all the odds always being against him.

He’ll always hold a special place in my heart, he’s so important to me and I’m just really glad he exists! 

[ao3feed-bakudeku]

by gans24

The definition of a hero is both a simple and straightforward affair and an incredibly complicated annoyance- because if you ask any one person they will most likely give you a different answer- And mostly they are all acceptable answers, perfectly ingested by interviewers and readers all over. Except, apparently if it’s Katsuki’s answer.

Katsuki has already long figured out just how biased the world could be and that it was never in his favor. He was never going to be the light in the world, the moral compass, the symbol of hope or whatever. And although the thought did give him heartburn and a stomach ache that felt like the pits of hell had been dropped inside and were banging on his stomach lining- it didn’t exactly surprise him. If he was honest the only real reason he even cared at all that he would never be those things is that he knows that the one person he had been trying to beat all his life is the very personification of them.

Words: 7053, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia, my hero - Fandom

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Categories: M/M

Characters: Bakugou Katsuki, Midoriya Izuku, Kirishima Eijirou, Iida Tenya, Uraraka Ochako, Yagi Toshinori | All Might, Original Characters, Original Female Character(s)

Relationships: Bakugou Katsuki/Midoriya Izuku

Additional Tags: Mild Blood, Explicit Language, Bakugou Katsuki Swears A Lot, Mentioned Class 1-A (My Hero Academia), Post-Graduation

[twatd]

6,000 Years of Murder - What Does It All Mean?

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve written around 12,500 words breaking down the first half of issue #36 and providing some historical context for its whirlwind tour through human history, but I’ve stuck largely to just that - historical context. So far, I’ve done very little interpretation of what this deluge of information means for the issue, the characters or the series as a whole.

In the meantime, some of the other members of WicDiv’s excellent fandom have weighed in with theories and analysis, breaking down patterns or approaching the issue from different angles (as always, we here at TWATD encourage you to follow blogs like @pomegranate-salad, @myfirstsearchengine, @damnationisdelightful, @bookofpoems etc and to track the various WicDiv hashtags, provided you don’t mind spoilers). So having come to the end of my historical trek, what can I offer?

Before I answer that, I first want to offer a caveat: my knowledge of history is largely self-taught and pieced together from Wikipedia articles and various other sources of dubious repute. I am in no way a scholar in this area, and it would be remiss of me not to mention that the biases of both how Western academia approaches history and my own personal tastes have informed what facts got included and what didn’t in my coverage.

I have tried to blend “Big Event and Important Men”-style history with a look at things like social, economic and even environmental approaches, but I have no idea how successful I’ve been. It’s also worth noting that, as always, women tend to get the short shrift in history, and as such, there’s little sense in my posts of what life was like for them in any given period. The assumption is generally: much worse than men.

All of that said, let’s return to what conclusions we can find at the end of all this research and waffle. At the beginning of my writing, I thought I’d stumbled across a solid pattern, with Persephone fighting back closely linked to major leaps forward in human civilisation (Uruk as the first major city, the construction of the Great Pyramids, the reign of Hammurabi) but visits to places like Wrangel Island quickly undermined that hypothesis.

Furthermore, how exactly do you quantify when a leap forward becomes worthy of a “fight back” moment? If my research has proved anything, it’s that all progress happens in fits and starts, with plenty of steps backward along the way. Pinpointing true tipping points is incredibly hard.

But that line of thought, looking at how the Recurrences figured into the overall progress of humanity and the civilisations that they visited, led me to question one of the central assumptions of the series. We’re told fairly early on that the Pantheon acts to inspire humanity, sparking innovation and inspiring great cultural works. But looking back at the societies that each Recurrence has interacted with, I’m not so sure about that.

Shortly after the Pantheon’s visit to 1922 America, the Great Depression hit and within 20 years, America was back fighting in another World War. After the 1830s European Recurrence, France suffered through many more years of chaotic leadership and the continent as a whole was beset with wars until 1871. Travelling back further, we can find cultures hit with invasion, disease, environmental disaster and overall decline after a Recurrence visits, all the way back to Mesopotamia in 3770BC.

The interactions that we witness between Ananke and Persephone don’t seem to have any impact on whether or not a Recurrence leads to prosperity or downfall for a given culture, but the number of ‘bad Recurrences’ definitely increases as we travel forward in time, suggesting that either the Pantheon are getting worse at their job, or the increase in historical evidence makes it easier to spot these failures.

Once again, this hypothesis depends on how you view any given part of history. Was 1473BC, when the Pantheon was active in the Northern Indus Valley, a success? The Indus Valley Civilisation has collapsed, returning the area to a more tribal cultural model after hundreds of years of progress, but this time also sees the emergence of the Vedic texts that will form the foundation of Hinduism. 1738AD was followed by a successful revolution by the American colonists, but that also resulted in a major blow to the British Empire and spelled further devastation to the native cultures who had lived and thrived there for thousands of years.

Despite (or perhaps because of) the wealth of information dumped on us in this issue, it’s hard to nail down any concrete answers. Is Ananke being honest when she says the Pantheon is there to inspire humanity? Are Recurrences where there has been a noticeable decline afterwards ones where her ritual failed, or The Great Darkness succeeded in its nebulous agenda? How does Persephone figure into all of this?

There’s also a cynical interpretation that we can take, one popularised by The Third Man and Tilda Swinton in Constantine – humanity requires conflict to spur it onto greatness. Unhappiness, uncertainty and upheaval breeds innovation and creativity, we’re told. You can hear this hypothesis every time someone tells a comedian they must be happy that Donald Trump is in office, or asks “Would Van Gogh have been a great artist if he’d been treated for his crippling mental health issues?”

You can probably tell from my tone here what I think of this argument, and while I can’t see it being one the team behind The Wicked + The Divine agrees with either, I can imagine it being one that Ananke ascribes to. Sacrifice seems to be a running theme in the series, and the idea that the Pantheon is responsible for disruptive chaos in the hope that it spurs a leap forward in culture – I can see that having some legs. One thing is for certain - wherever the Pantheon appears, change - for better or for worse - was almost guaranteed to happen.

I could jabber on about the new perspective this project has given me on everything from the Middle East to Brexit, but I’ve already passed the 1,000 word mark and I’m sure you’re sick of long reads by now. I’ll leave you with this hope - that 6,000 Years of Murder has given you a sense of the scope of human history, and helped you enjoy this book from a slightly different angle.

Like what we do, and want to help us make more of it? Visit patreon.com/timplusalex

[inclusivelanguageblr-blog]

Inclusive Language

Justicia para todos, reads a sign hanging from a bridge in Mexico City. The black <o> from todos has been crossed with red, and above it there is a scribbled <x>. Todxs. The same word that has been taking social media, especially Twitter, by storm on the last few months. Hispanic people from across the world seem to have something to say regarding this grammatical, and social, issue. The truth is, most people wouldn’t normally bat an eye at some badly written street signs. But it’s different this time. Swapping the <o> for an <x> is part of a trend called Lenguage Inclusivo, or Inclusive Language, a trend set of freeing nouns of their gender by replacing the vocals <a> (used for feminine words) and <o> (used for masculine words) by neutrals such as <e>, <x>, or even <@>. This has angered linguists, but teens and young adults continue to stubbornly plaster the words across billboards and social media. It is a rightful fight. Language helps us understand the world, and language cannot remain static in the face of accelerated progress towards social equality. Gendered nouns no longer encompass our reality, and therefore the language must be adapted to the needs of those who use it.

Inclusive language has defenders and detractors across Hispanic countries such as Spain, Colombia, Chile, Perú, Uruguay, and Venezuela. The phenomenon of de-gendering the language has been registered, however, in other languages. Santiago Kalinowski, director of the Department of Linguistic Investigations of the Argentinian Academy of Letters, pointed to the Swedish Academy which introduced to its glossary the neutral pronoun “hen”. On the other side of the spectrum, a French school manual that integrated inclusive language into its writing sparked a prohibition on inclusive language in all official texts back on 2017. The decision of the Swede government to adapt the dictionary to the needs of the people comes to show that inclusive language is a doable reality, even if some other countries, such as France, are still resisting the change.

The push for a non-sexist language is nothing new. Dora Barrancos, Argentinian sociologist and militant feminist notes that since the beginning of the second wave of feminism in the 60´s there has been an interest in eliminating sexism from the language. She explains: “Language denotes us as people, therefore correcting the language to eliminate the male default is an incredibly important task in order to have equality between the sexes.” Language is a crucial component of our lives: it ties us to a culture, a time, and a place.

The biggest defenders of Inclusive Language are people under 26, young writers and artists who argue that a gendered language does no longer reflect our reality. Oscar Conde, Doctor of Literature and member of the Porteña Academy of Lunfardo, explains that its people under the age of 25 that make up nearly ninety nine percent of words. “Teenagers have naturalized inclusive language and that is understood due to the unprejudiced way they live sexuality in. For them, it’s not about males or females but about people. And we must be willing to incorporate this into our language,” he says. After all, if teenagers modify the language, it will be passed down to the generations to come.

Changing a language to fit current events will always be met with backlash from those who came before, tied to a different time. Real Academia Española (RAE), a cultural institution based on Madrid is dedicated to regulating the language by publishing norms which strive to unify the different variations of it. When the debate around inclusive language grew, this institution took to twitter to clearly express their disapproval of the trend. Through several tweets, they have consistently explained why there is absolutely no need to change the language. Most notably, the tweet that reads: “The use of @ or of the letters <E> and <x> as supposed marks of the inclusive gender are alien to the morphology of Spanish, as well as unnecessary, since the grammatical male gendering already fulfills the function of a non-gendered denominator.”  Inclusive language poses a threat to the very core of the language, which is its masculine default. Linguists and Spanish enthusiasts alike praised the institution.

The forms of discrimination towards women in grammar and dictionaries have been multiple. The director of RAE, Darío Villanueva, said in an interview with El País that the problem lays in confusing grammar with misogyny. He also qualifies political correctness as a perverse form of censorship, and he complains about how determined groups demand that RAE retires several definitions from the dictionary. “If the words are there, it’s because people use them. The problem would be creating a dictionary made up of only pretty words. Words are also used to be a scoundrel,” Villanueva stated. Statements such as this one has been used by opposers of inclusive language, who fail to realize that the claims made by feminists and youths are not unfounded. Until 2014, the RAE defined the verb gozar (to enjoy) as “To know a woman carnally.” Currently it has been modified as “To have sexual intercourse with another.” This way, misogyny is avoided, and different sexual orientations are included, showing that language can and should be adapted to the demands of those who use it.

It is a well-known fact that language shapes the way we interact with the world. A study conducted by Standford researchers, How Language Affects Thought in a Connectionist Model, highlights the fact that being a native speaker of a gendered language does affect the way we connect with our environment. In the English language, only people are referred to with he and she while nouns are without gender. However, in languages such as German and Spanish all nouns are gendered including those that refer to objects. An experiment conducted by Boroditsky et al. (2003) studied native Spanish and German speakers, asking the participants to describe an object using only three adjectives. The objects they were describing were male coded in Spanish and female coded in German, and this difference was highlighted in the words chosen by the participants to describe the objects. For instance, the word for ‘key’ is feminine in Spanish and masculine in German, and the subjects whose native tongue is Spanish chose feminine adjectives as opposed to the German subjects. The perceptions we gain from our native language transcend even when we speak a different, gender neutral language such as English. This study proves that changing our language will change our minds, giving us a broader understanding of things once we are free from the boundaries of gender and its conceptions.

Language is one of the means by which the conception of the world in which we live is transmitted and it is also a social element that allows us to interact daily with others. It can be permeated by cultural biases that maintain discriminatory ideals, such as the one directed towards women by minimizing them, making them invisible by taking men as a measure of things. For example, when masculinizing professions and trades, or by the generic use of the masculine when talking about both women and men. The trend started by feminists back in the sixties has resonated within today’s youth, and they have decided to take matters into their own hands, to revolutionize the language that their parents and grandparents failed to change. No number of linguists, angry twitter users, or mocking teachers can stop the tidal wave of youthful determination. Amid such backlash, young writers have been slowly and steadily introduced their ideas into the mainstream, and it’s only a matter of time before we all find ourselves changing our <o> for a new, neutral <e>.

[sisterofiris]

Does Satan mean “truth” in ancient Sanskrit?

Its proven that the Greek God Dionysus is the Hindu God Shiva by the academic book “Gods of Love and Ecstasy: The Traditions of Shiva and Dionysus” by Alain Danielou (an academic scholar and professor who lived in India). What do you think?

I’m not sure whether these two questions were asked by the same anon, but I’m posting them together since they both relate to ancient India.

Disclaimer: I’m not sure what led this person/these people to think I’m competent to answer these questions in depth, since I’ve never studied Sanskrit nor Hinduism. I will answer based on my knowledge of linguistics, Ancient Greek religion and general academia, but I might miss some more nuanced points which better informed people are free to correct (@protoindoeuropean for the Sanskrit maybe?).

Okay, so the etymology of Satan. The theory that it means “truth” seems to be based on sat + an (short for ananda according to this link, or anna according to this one). The problem with this kind of etymology is that, while it makes sense superficially, it doesn’t work historically or linguistically. We call these “folk etymologies”, etymologies based on apparent similarities between words, and they’re incredibly easy to create. Plato considers dozens of them for the Gods’ names in his Cratylus. I can even make up one of my own for Satan: what if the name came from Sumerian ša₃-ta-an, meaning “the sky from the heart”?

Sanskrit Satan may be linguistically possible - though I can’t comment on how - but we have an alternative which is clearly plausible, Hebrew שָׂטָן (śāṭān). This word, meaning “opponent” or “accuser”, is used in the Bible to refer not only to Satan, but also to common enemies. Take for example 1 Samuel 29:4:

וַיִּקְצְפ֨וּ עָלָ֜יו שָׂרֵ֣י פְלִשְׁתִּ֗ים וַיֹּ֣אמְרוּ לֹו֩ שָׂרֵ֨י פְלִשְׁתִּ֜ים הָשֵׁ֣ב אֶת־הָאִ֗ישׁ וְיָשֹׁב֙ אֶל־מְקֹומֹו֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר הִפְקַדְתֹּ֣ו שָׁ֔ם וְלֹֽא־יֵרֵ֤ד עִמָּ֙נוּ֙ בַּמִּלְחָמָ֔ה וְלֹא־יִֽהְיֶה־לָּ֥נוּ לְשָׂטָ֖ן בַּמִּלְחָמָ֑ה וּבַמֶּ֗ה יִתְרַצֶּ֥ה זֶה֙ אֶל־אֲדֹנָ֔יו הֲלֹ֕וא בְּרָאשֵׁ֖י הָאֲנָשִׁ֥ים הָהֵֽם׃

But the Philistine commanders were angry. “Send him back to the town you’ve given him!” they demanded. “He can’t go into the battle with us. What if he turns against us in battle and becomes our adversary? Is there any better way for him to reconcile himself with his master than by handing our heads over to him?” (New Living Translation)

If Satan did originally mean “truth”, its use in contexts like this wouldn’t make much sense.

The theory also sets of my alarm bells for a major reason: I can’t find any academic articles looking into it, and all the websites that discuss it are clearly non-professional and biased. To quote my guide to online research: “Generally, you should look for websites that are focused on your topic, not websites that use your topic to prove a point.”

One of the web pages I linked above claims: “Abraham took a lot of pre-existing ideas and twisted them for a self serving, fabricated religion, which proceeded to then twist even more ideas (and generations of minds) and created 2 more religions which all literally demonize a pursuit of objective empirical Truth. Satan & objectivity are not our enemy. A historical conditioning in dishonesty is our enemy.”

Now think about what people want to gain from claiming Abrahamic religion’s adversary, Satan, is Truth. Think about what kind of ideology this can lead to. Think really hard about whether that’s something you want to associate yourself with.

*

Let’s move on now to Alain Daniélou and his theory that Śiva is Dionysos. This has more scientific basis, since Dionysos has strong associations with the East and particularly India (Nonnos’ Dionysiaca are a good example). The first to draw a parallel between Dionysos and Śiva seems to be Megasthenes, a Greek historian who travelled with Alexander the Great to India. In his Indica (preserved in fragments), Megasthenes describes several native Indian deities, including Heracles and Dionysos; however, this is not proof that Heracles and Dionysos are Indian, but rather an example of something called interpretatio graeca - calling foreign deities by their closest Greek equivalent. Herodotus does this a lot in Book 2 of his Histories, where he refers to Horus as Apollon and Isis as Demeter, among others.

Megasthenes was likely tapping into the similarities between Dionysos and Śiva, of which there are undoubtedly many. I could find a number of academic articles discussing them. However, only Alain Daniélou seems convinced that both Gods are the same entity - other scholars view them as deities with similar roles within their pantheon.

It is possible Dionysos and Śiva have the same origin, or that they influenced each other mutually. There was certainly contact between the Middle East and the Indus Valley, and between the Greek peninsula and the Middle East, as long ago as the Early Bronze Age. I don’t know enough to tell you how likely the adoption of an Indian deity into the Greek pantheon is, but, though I’m not opposed to the idea, I’m not likely to trust Alain Daniélou on it. Why? Because he tells me himself:

This book is not an essay on the history of religions. (p. 7)

This is confirmed by the lack of understanding he displays about archeology, linguistics, and the ancient Mediterranean/Near Eastern world. But more than his lack of scientific rigour, I want to draw attention to these three quotes from the foreword:

The dark forces which seem to rule the modern world have shown great ability in diverting, deforming and annihilating all man’s instinctive urges toward basic realities and the divine order of the world. (p. 8)

The way of Shiva-Dionysus is the only way by which humanity can be saved. (p. 9)

There is no other true religion. (p. 10)

Again, think about what he’s trying to gain by writing this book. Think carefully about how this influences its content. Can religious ideology really be considered academic “proof”?

*

I hope I don’t come off as too harsh on these topics. It’s okay to get confused by what is trustworthy and what is not! The most important thing is to keep asking questions, both of yourself and to others. Don’t stop at the surface. If you’re not sure where to start, I really recommend checking out my guide to online research :)