#who also believes even fictional entities are real in some way

[shadow-the-crow]

It's my goal in life to always say the name of random, increasingly weirder entities instead of "God"

"By Odin!"

"Oh StarClan..."

"Thank the Eye!"

[marzipanandminutiae]

I've gotten some interesting responses to my post wondering if Um Actually 3 AM Is The REAL Time For Supernatural Occurrences was a traditional thing before I first noticed it in the creepypasta boom of the late 00s-2010s, as many of those creepypastas claimed. some of them along "guys. please. reading comprehension" lines, I admit

"Lots of cultures have a Witching Hour!" yes, true, but that's not 3 AM specifically. for a long time it was usually midnight, or an unspecified late night/wee hours of the morning period

"This author says 3 AM feels like depression or vice versa!" that is not about Spooky Things Happening; try again

"early Christian beliefs say-" "well, in traditional Japanese folklore-" sources??? (also from what I've seen while looking into this, the Hour of the Ox in historical Japanese timekeeping was between 1 AM and 3 AM- 3 AM specifically was the end of it, not the beginning. but it was a traditional time for curses)

A mention of 3 AM as a particularly bad time of night re: health, sleep, nightmares, etc. in Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962), which DOES seem reliable and close enough to what I'm talking about

Apparently the 1974 Amityville murders happened at 3 AM, and of course that house had a highly public (probably faked) haunting. So that could have contributed

I haven't yet found anything earlier than that Bradbury reference that SPECIFICALLY mentions 3 AM as a time when scary and/or supernatural things happen, WITH ACTUAL SOURCES

Interestingly, the Bradbury quote doesn't seem to refer back to an existing cultural belief in the idea of Evil 3 AM(TM). rather it's framed as the narrator's personal feelings around that particular time of night:

"Oh God, midnight’s not bad, you wake and go back to sleep, one or two’s not bad, you toss but sleep again. Five or six in the morning, there’s hope, for dawn’s just under the horizon. But three, now, Christ, three A.M.! Doctors say the body’s at low tide then. The soul is out. The blood moves slow. You’re the nearest to dead you’ll ever be save dying. Sleep is a patch of death, but three in the morn, full wide-eyed staring, is living death! You dream with your eyes open. God, if you had strength to rouse up, you’d slaughter your half-dreams ... And wasn’t it true, had he read somewhere, more people in hospitals die at 3 A.M. than at any other time." [I can't find any credible studies of this, for the record]

so it seems like the seeds of the idea were floating around in the cultural consciousness for a long time, between unspecified Witching Hours and the Hour of the Ox curses and this probably erroneous but popular belief that most people who die in hospitals do so at 3 AM. but as for the very strictly-defined notion that Supernatural Things Are Most Likely To Happen At 3 AM...the earliest anecdotal reference I saw to someone having heard that was from the 1980s, and it doesn't seem to have really entered the zeitgeist with force until the late 2000s, earliest

unless someone shows me a source on something earlier, that's what I'm going with

which leaves my takeaway, as a paranormal believer, being: there's nothing supernaturally special about 3 AM, unless it has individual significance to a specific entity or haunting (ie residual apparition of an event that took place at that time). it's something people came up with for interesting fiction, as a fresh take on the longstanding western idea that the Witching Hour is midnight, and not even that long ago

[faewrenbird]

Homicipher Theory

Mr. Gap: The Homicidal Stalker

Disclaimer: This is all just my own interpretation and speculation. This is not negative or an attack on the character. I love Mr. Gap for being the worst of the worst. He’s sickening and awful and makes my skin crawl but in the best way that horror fiction can manage.

That said, Trigger Warnings: Mentions of stalking, sexual assault, serial killing, and cannibalism

Also

Homicipher spoilers/Mr Gap ending spoilers

-

If we go by my pre-established theory that the Ghost Apartments are a haunted grounds where an apartment building was built over the ruins of a hospital and collapsed subway, then we must assume that it’s haunted by ghosts from many different time periods. I believe that ghosts like Mr. Crawling and Mr. Hood are among the oldest, original haunts. Ghosts like Mr. Silvair and the nurse are from the hospital time period. Some ghosts are from the subway collapse. And some, like Mr. Gap and the Bride, are more recent, from when the apartment building still had occupants before its abandonment.

Mr. Gap is a rather unique entity among the ghosts. He’s the only one who can be anywhere at any time, can easily shift between the real world and the spirit realm, and clearly understands that he is a ghost.

But why? What makes him special?

I fear that the answer may be an unsavory one...

Mr. Gap

Mr. Gap is the second entity we can meet once we wake up with control of ourselves in the Ghost Apartments. Moments before we meet him, Mr. Hood gives us a warning. He tells us to be careful, there are dangerous entities out there.

Ignoring his advice entirely, we interact with Mr. Gap. And since we don’t know the language yet, we’re very likely to smile at him, resulting in our first swift death of the game via getting our heart ripped out and eaten.

The best thing we can do in early game is to ignore him. When he asks for a body part, step away. Later on, we can interact with him more directly, but initially, survival means not flashing him our pearly whites.

It becomes obvious early on why he’s called Mr. Gap. It’s because he…well, he only exists in gaps. He’s not a roaming ghost, he appears to be bound by the walls of this ever-changing building. But wherever there’s a hole in the wall, there’s Mr. Gap, peering out from between strands of greasy hair with one eye.

Every time we interact with him, he requests a body part from us. Heart, arm, leg, head…and he means this literally. If we consent (or even just smile at him) he’ll devour whatever body part he asked for.

But he can be helpful. While being chased by Mr. Hugeface, we can desperately ask him to get us out of there and force ourselves into a vent with him. He agrees to take us to safety, though not out of the kindness of his heart. He always wants something in return. Fortunately for us, he settles for just some of our hair this time.

There is never a time when he’s not trying to weasel something out of us. Even in his own endings, he bargains and pleads for our heart.

Now, you can easily interpret this to simply mean that he’s some sort of mischievous spirit. Evil in the eyes of humans, but more of a representation of chaotic neutral yokai. Certainly, some of the entities in the Ghost Apartments bear loose similarities to yokai. And the tropes of bargaining and trickery go hand in hand with these sorts of myths.

Personally, I lean away from that reading because the game actually doesn’t seem to use very much in the way of Japanese yokai myths. I dug deep trying to drawn comparisons for each of the ghosts, but they were loose at best. There seems much more evidence that the ghosts are, as the name implies, actual ghosts of humans who died here, rather than spiritual entities.

And if that’s the case, it begs the question: Who was Mr. Gap? How did he die? Why does he haunt rather than move on into the afterlife?

I feel that the imagery of his character makes the answers obvious. The game takes place in an apartment building where Mr. Gap lives in the walls. I think that’s a direct reference to his life before death.

I theorize that when the apartment was inhabited, Mr. Gap was a man who crept through crawlspaces and inside of walls in order to spy on women. I believe it can be interpreted that he also lured, abused, and killed those women.

“Mighty hefty accusations, Wren. Where’s your proof?”

No proof, only evidence from my own interpretation to support the claims! I'm sure there are plenty of other ways to interpret his character, this is just mine!

Exhibit A - Living in the walls. Again, this seems the most obvious and on-the-nose point. He quite literally lives in the walls and is bound to spaces with gaps. But he also has an apparently innate ability to navigate the ghost apartments no matter how much it shift and changes. This could allude to how he had the internal structure of the apartment building perfectly mapped when he was alive.

More importantly, he only makes himself seen through holes in the walls and gaps like vents. And we know he’s watching us at all times from those very gaps. This is a direct reference to him being a peeping Tom. Even the other ghosts seem to recognize this, as we can get a humorous scene of Mr. Silvair taping up a hole in the wall so that Mr. Gap can’t look inside.

Exhibit B - Self Awareness. This is the most fascinating aspect of Mr. Gap, in my opinion. Most of the ghosts we meet seem fragmented or confused. If they know what they are, or were, they don’t show it. They seem to understand that there’s an “other” place, but not really the distinction between life and death.

Mr. Gap, however, outright knows and brags about being a ghost. At one point, he shows us old newspaper clippings with a photo of three women with censored faces standing in front of the apartment building, with Mr. Gap in a window behind them.

He can, and does, travel between realms. I assume this is possible because he’s bound to spaces within the apartment, but not specifically spaces in the spirit realm. The apartment is his cage, not the spirit realm itself. Because of this, he’s perfectly capable of peering out at modern day strangers walking by on the street and in the alleys. Also perfectly capable of haunting the old building and keeping its property value at a hearty zero.

But what does self awareness have to do with him being a criminal stalker and killer? Well, I think that he’s afforded these sort of rule-breaking abilities for one main reason, which brings me to…

Exhibit C - He’s a psychopath. No, I’m not using the term colloquially. I mean that truly, by definition, Mr. Gap is a psychopath. To be more accurate, by today’s definitions in the DSM-5, he would have Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD), characterized by a lack of empathy, disregard for others, and deceitfulness (*ASPD is more complex than this, please do not take this as a statement on the disorder which is characterized by much more than these three things).

If this seems like a stretch, I invite you to look at the three endings you can get at a particular point in the game, all involving Mr. Gap.

In this unfortunate decision path, we manage to escape the Ghost Apartments. However, by this points we’re too far gone to be able to live among normal society. Not only has our memory been warped by the ghost realm, but our body is unrecognizable and grotesquely inhuman. We know this based on the reaction of the first person we ask for directions. He panics at the sight of us and flees. We are, for all intents and purposes, the rotting Michael Afton parading about as a normal human while looking like a decaying zombie.

At this point there’s only one person left who can help us. Mr. Gap. Since he’s the only one who can cross between worlds. But even at our darkest and most vulnerable moment, is he going to help out of the kindness of his heart? No, of course not! In fact, he takes it as the perfect opportunity to ask for our heart again, the same way he did the very first time we spoke to him.

We have three options. 1, give him our heart. As expected, the ending is the same as the beginning. He kills us and eats our heart. 2, refuse to give him our heart. He’s disappointed, but leaves us alone. We wander down the alley but don’t get far before we pass out. And then…Mr. Gap takes our unconscious body and, wouldn’t you know it, eats us anyway.

In the third option, we give him someone else’s heart. We kill a random person and deliver their heart to Mr. Gap instead. He’s not exactly pleased but he did make a deal to bring us back, so he reluctantly drags us back into the apartment.

Sadly, while Mr. Gap is able to cross realms at will, he can’t bring us across. Instead, it seems he just brings us inside of the abandoned apartment. We don’t fully understand this though, which seems deceptive on his part. Sure, yes, he brought us back as promised. But not to where we wanted to be.

Now, it’s just us and Mr. Gap. Of course, he keeps begging for body parts. Except now, we have the chance to ask him why. The question…confuses him, even seems to irritate him. “Why?” What reason does there need to be besides that it’s fun?

Honestly, this interaction was bone-chilling to me. By no stretch of the imagination does Mr. Gap view us as anything more than a shiny toy (that was how I felt about it here at least).

I believe it’s this callousness that acts as his superpower. Unlike the other ghosts, he doesn’t have any emotional attachments preventing him from moving on to the afterlife. There’s no particularly strong thing keeping him here. He’s not repenting (Mr. Hood), he’s not in a cycle of suffering (Ms. Blue-Clad/Mr. Chopped), he’s not obsessively invested in his life’s purpose (Mr. Silvair). He’s just. Having fun.

I think this is a carry-over from when he was alive. He had no particular reason for stalking and killing beyond the fact that it was fun for him.

Because of this, he’s not trapped in the same way as the other ghosts. He’s actually quite content to cross between realms and peep at women who wander by. And if he’s real lucky, someone will get close enough to snatch.

Exhibit D - The Newspaper Clippings. What’s so special about them apart from the clear fact that he’s bragging about being a ghost? Well…I don’t think that’s all that he was bragging about. This old clipping includes a picture of three women with censored faces standing in front of the apartment. Victims, perhaps? It’s quite common for serial killers to keep trophies or memorabilia of their kills. Taking newspaper clippings reporting on the crime is actually a big one.

Exhibit E - Cannibalism. Now this, I believe, could be either literal or metaphorical, or a combination of both. When he was prowling and murdering women, did he actually eat them as well? Maybe. Or maybe the afterlife cannibalism is metaphorical, depicting him as a predator, with us as prey. The symbolism of flesh eating is violating, as well, and his biggest interest is in eating our heart. This could line up with a common delusion among stalkers, in which they believe the object of their delusions is in love with them.

Exhibit F - Sexual Assault. You may think this is a stretch and it’s bad enough that he could have been a serial killer and I’d agree with you. But I really think there’s enough here to at least suggest that he included sexual assault in his modus operandi. For one thing, he was a peeping tom, unquestionably. That’s the whole point of the holes and gaps that he peeks out of. This suggests sexual motivation for his actions. Then, there’s the possible symbolism of cannibalism meaning that he’s a predator. And, as also stated, when he brags about being spotted as a ghost, it’s on a newspaper clipping with only women, which lends credence to the idea that he stalked and spied on them specifically.

And lastly, the biggest evidence I have towards this point is in the Return Ending. At the very end, he makes his finally appearance under our sheets. This imagery feels intentional and deliberate. We lift the sheets and see him essentially between our legs. We dismiss him as being a prankster, and this ending concludes with him suddenly lunging from under the blankets with a wicked grin and hands outstretched to presumably harm us.

And that’s it. Fade to black.

To me, this reads obviously as a reference to assault. The stalker is in our bed, between our legs, and leaps to violently harm us.

We know that Mr. Gap doesn’t have a body, only arms and a face. So, this action appears to be simply a reflection of the actions he performed when he was alive. OR there’s also the possibility that he lied to us, and he does, in fact, have a body. I wouldn’t put it past him.

-

So, is it possible that Mr. Gap really is a reflection of some of the worst parts of humanity? Maybe. Or maybe he does love us, or he is just a mischievous yokai. I like the thought that he's a monster who gets away with it because everyone views him as an irritation rather than a real threat. Even if I'm way off base, he's still a totally fascinating character due to his uniqueness among the other present entities.

Honestly, serial killer or not, who would say no to a face like this?

[valtsv]

This isn't a gotcha, so please don't take it as such, but would yuou be willing to explain what it is about VAL that makes her such a favourite of yours? I can't stand her myself, she comes across to me as a bully given god-like power that she abuses for her own amusement, and I've seen you acknowledge as much, but we draw completely different conclusions from that. I just want to understand your perspective.

i've been anticipating a question like this for a while now, so i'm more than happy to answer for you!

you're right, VAL is in some ways a "bully given godlike power" as you put it, and there's no avoiding that (nor do i want to). and yeah, i do like her in part because of that, because i have a fondness for horrible fictional characters and in particular "bad victim" archetypes, of which VAL certainly is one. but i think what makes her compelling to me, rather than repulsive, is that she is fundamentally a cautionary tale and a tragedy. in-universe, she's the scapegoat. the example. the "make the right choices or this could be you". she's inescapably, heartbreakingly human in her awfulness, and that makes her terrifying, but it also makes her deeply sad (at least to me).

i also strongly believe in rehabilitative/restorative justice, so for me, wanting better for VAL is about my real-world principles to a degree. i can't and won't argue that VAL doesn't function as an uncomfortable allusion to a lot of atrocious crimes against humanity (by humanity) within the narative, and that anyone who finds her upsetting or even hateful for these reasons is absolutely justified in doing so. however, she's still a fantasy entity at the end of the day. she's not a 1:1 stand-in for real-world abuses any more than, say, a vampire or werewolf, which plenty of people are more than happy to explore the nuances of. and there's also the question of what punitive measures would even achieve in her case, beyond personal satisfaction for the one administering or spectating them (which is not to say that wanting to punch VAL makes you as bad as she is, just that her arc is, among other things, about how cycles of abuse and violence perpetuate). the worst that could possibly happen to her has already happened. she's been tortured. she's been taken advantage of for her mistaken belief that working for and with the system has the opportunity to benefit her, and died for it. there's nothing to be "learned" from her punishment that hasn't already been shown to us. that she hasn't already internalised. if she were ever to develop a stable conscience, that would be punishment enough in my opinion.

despite being a victim of people not entirely unlike VAL, i personally am not her victim, so treating her with sympathy and kindness whilst acknowledging the elephant in the room that is her many (fictional) war crimes is not something that requires any cognitive dissonance on my behalf. i would cautiously argue that the narrative agrees with me somewhat in this regard - the few times VAL is treated to a genuine act of kindness with no ulterior motives, it shatters her composure and outward conviction that what she's doing is necessary for her personal satisfaction, and even prompts her to reconsider on occasion (sparing the woodsman comes to mind). i'm not saying anyone needs to hug her and tell her she's valid, but if all it takes is some genuine good intent to get her to engage in introspection, i'm willing to be the person to offer it.

[kremlin]

i actually do know who needs to hear this, it’s most people, in fact, it’s likely you, statistically; we are entering the american election campaign season, and there are caveats i’d like you to be aware of, and to that effect, i am cashing in on my many years of demonstrated knowledge about The Computer.

you indeed cannot trust what you read on the internet. someone will, indeed, go on here and tell lies. this is no shocker to you, you know this, i know this, i know you know this, but i insist you think about it.

you must know my beliefs regarding conspiracy theories fall far, far to one side of the spectrum: i do not believe them. i dismiss them out of hand on principle. axiomatically. and i am here today to tell you the concept, existence, execution, and proximity of paid, phony, engagement-manipulated, political advertisement is not only real, it is the status quo.

would you describe yourself to others as:

A.) smarter than than they think you are

or

B.) not as dumb as they think you are

if you responded with option A, you are more than likely to be greatly more susceptible to these underhanded messages than you think. option B respondent’s outlook is brighter, only relatively. to restate this in a more digestible way, there are two wolves inside you, one takes top-voted comments to reddit posts on face value. the other, takes top-voted comments to reddit posts on face value. you take top-voted comments to reddit posts on face value.

those responsible for such comments are effective in their endeavors, because they think about it. they do not approach their work mystically nor inefficiently. they know what to say to you, because they know what language you speak.

a thoughtless individual would read one of the only proper noun phrases in this post, “american election season”, and limit their perspective to exactly two possible entities to watch out for. this individual has, with a pep in their step and a whistle on their lips, stepped directly on a land mine. maybe this individual was you, if so, don’t sweat it, allow me to yank you away at the last moment by your shirt collar. there's tertiary actors at play, and possibly even more, if only we could invent a word that mean's "the fourth thing" and so on

a very large, very easily guessable country has, for some time now, engaged in organized astroturfing or misinformation or disinformation or whatever-you-want-to-call-it campaigns, to great effect, with their angle being to flood the airwaves with so much conflicting information that you, the individual, feel hopeless, and lose your confidence in discerning truth from fiction.

i use this example not because that country or my country or this election or whatever is a key component here, they're not, this applies to everyone using the internet socially, and if you don't think there are disingenuous actors' words appearing on your computer screen at some regular rate, you're also stepping on a landmine.

you just have to think about things, and maybe, from time to time, turn on an electric stove and put your finger on it to remind yourself that there is indeed a very real, objective reality we live in, and that if you find yourself asking, "how can we see if our eyes aren't real", someone has put rats in your head

it goes beyond just politics though, hell, i would describe all of modern marketing to use essentially these same tricks. don't fall for them! my technique is to just approach any written text found online, most especially "comments", with the same utter hater energy as salieri in amadeus.

and hey, while you're at it, pass this thinking along to kids, they're kind-of the first generation that has to deal with an internet that is mostly ingenuine meaningless bullshit, not like we had it, when it was mostly genuine meaningless bullshit.

[evilspamtonology]

30 days of UTDR Metaposting: Matryoshka Fictionality

A few years ago I made a post about Undertale being Deltarune's Majora's Mask, and in it I mention degrees of fictionality, so I thought that to kick off the 30 days of metaposts, what better than to elaborate on something I had said earlier?

This isn't something unusual or ingenious and moreso an organization of the fictionality exhibited in Deltarune and its surrounding media (the Gaster tweets, etc). Deltarune definitely expresses its worlds in a clear delimitation between "real" world and "fictional" world, that being the light world and the dark world (the symbolism of light/darkness as pertaining to "realness" is something separate that i'd love to explore some other day), but in the narrative surrounding the story there's more than those two, in a way I like to think a lot as a matryoshka doll, so I'd like to outline it from the outside in:

First doll - meeeeeee

This is the layer that we all are as real people playing a game designed by Toby Fox. This is the frontier of fictionality, the ultimate outer layer, and the conversation about whether that is true isn't really in the scope of this post I think. This is straightforward.

Second doll - The Preamble

Between the real world and the game there is, however, a little membrane of fictionality, consisting of the in-universe understanding of Gaster as the physical creator/game developer of Deltarune evidenced by the Gaster tweets when both chapters dropped, and the idea of him dialoguing to us as players in the outside layer. He is fictional, but more real than the characters in the deeper layers, in the game's own terms.

Third doll - SURVEY_PROGRAM

This is the world in which the Player exists as an in-universe cosmic entity, as well as the voice(s) behind the vessel creator (which I do assume are Gaster and a mysterious Second Guy). As an aside, I think it's perfectly fine that characters exist in multiple layers of fictionality, the same way characters heavily based on real people are in two layers of fictionality at the same time. So as long as they originate in a "realer" layer of the matryoshka doll, they're free to have versions of themselves all the way down.

Forth doll - The Light World

Self explanatory, the "real world" as viewed by darkeners, inhabited by people with more power and bigger lives than darkeners. I think the relationship between this doll and the next one is how we can extrapolate the rest of the layers.

Fifth doll - The Dark World

Created by lightners and inhabited by darkeners who understand their role as tools, objects or otherwise created by lightners. I think that at first sight it feels very religious-y, and there's no doubt that Deltarune has a lot to say about religion, but when thinking more about this relationship between lightners and darkners I think there's more of an understanding of "these are people and this is a world that is more important than ours". Which is a terrifying thought to have if you do not have a deterministic nature, which we as real people share with lightners.

A sixth doll...?

At the end of chapter 2, Queen is attempting to create a dark world inside the cyber world, something that not only can only be attempted by someone who possesses free will (which is why she needed Noelle), but also we can pretty much assume would lead to something really, really bad. Dark worlds are supposed to be the "bedrock" of fictionality in Deltarune's universe, because creating something even less real within a reality where people do not have free will would've been somewhat cruel to those would-be darklings.

I mention this because I know that somewhere there's a really good deltarune analysis, I believe by weirdmaggedon, that does go down in more detail. I can't find it now, but if anyone knows what I'm talking about, please let me know so I can give proper credit to whomever thought that up. It's a very important part of this train of thought.

Anyway, I'm sure the next few chapters will play with this concept a lot, and I am personally very excited to see how they will take this doll apart.

[mechanical-sunchild]

"Otherkin identities come behind race stuff" do you hear yourself? You sound just like the "you can't kin outside of your race" people if someone is a wendigo then they're a fucking wendigo you're not even native so stfu

I'm sorry to tell you that no, being otherkin doesn't mean you can do whatever you want regardless of things like racism, cultural appropriation and respecting the wishes of closed cultures. Which is what I actally said, but yeah I guess that's 'race stuff'.

Your comparison is also very ignorant.

The 'you can't kin outside of your race' drama by and large started because of the large number of anime-sourced fictotypes and the general backlash against 'weeaboos' whether they were doing anything 'wrong' or not. By and large this issue was created and perpetuated by non-Japanese people trying to be morally good.

It was stupid not because 'it's not a choice to be otherkin!' but because fictional anime characters who are technically Japanese aren't real people and it's not harming any real Japanese people to identify as/be a fictional character who is technically Japanese.

You might want to exercise some kind of delicateness around the racial aspects of your fictotypes sure, but in general fictional is fictional and anime characters don't hold any special meaning or significance to Japanese culture other than artistically. I mean maybe some Japanese people were upset about it, but most of the people I saw were white and had created the problem in the name of Japanese people.

Meanwhile, real people in this world of various races who belong to various closed or otherwise marginalised and oppressed cultures have spoken out about how their folkloric, religious/spiritual and otherwise deeply rooted cultural figures are not 'cryptids' or similar. That they're sick of mainly white people changing the lore around these things and then using them in whatever way they see fit.

This includes for some who are aware of it, otherkin who use the names of these creatures and entities directly instead of just accepting that your otherkin identities aren't as important as the rights of these groups to tell you that it's closed off to you, you cannot use that name. Use some other name. Make your own creature name. Or, accept that you're part of the cultural appropriation of these creatures and practices and not morally pure, I guess.

It's not just the job of natives of the culture to defend it, by the way, what's the point of white privilege if I'm just sitting on my ass about stuff I know is wrong? I didn't invent this issue, I shut up and listened about it.

I'm not even saying that these people aren't what they say they are, especially if you believe otherkinism is purely involuntary, just that there's elements here which don't apply to other actual cryptids like mothman or bigfoot or something and our comfort as otherkin comes below not being racist and culturally appropriative even if like only two people are uncomfortable for racial reasons you should just not use that word.

[pixelgrotto]

Natural Avowed

I learned of 'natural fantasy' as a subgenre the other day after seeing the Fabula Ultima Natural Fantasy Atlas, which defines it as any work that features a connection between nature and humanity. Imagine green-infused organic trappings, references to the planet as Gaea, cautionary tales of climate change, lush forest settings, and protagonists who are druids, rangers, friends to animals, etc.

Avowed, an excellent action RPG made by Obsidian Entertainment, is one of the best natural fantasy media pieces I've seen in recent memory. The game seems to have gotten a good reception since its February release, but I'm of the mind that more people should play it. Set in the backdrop of the Pillars of Eternity duology, a world that feels like a Game Master's homebrew setting in the best way possible, Avowed casts the player as an envoy for a far-reaching empire who's supposed to check its colony of the Living Lands. This frontier island is suffering the effects of the Dreamscourge, a virus that both destroys minds and makes multicolored mushrooms pop up on everyone's skin.

Despite the terrible trappings of colonization, I find myself drawn to its real world historical paths and consequences, and the same is true for fictional tales. Avowed lets you subvert the role of the imperial lapdog, and you can be as empathic towards the Living Landers as you want to be, and even openly defy your orders. But beyond that, the game also delves into the idea of the Living Lands as its literal namesake - a breathing entity that's manifested an ecological scourge as a direct result of the colonial efforts of the occupying party.

As someone who's been working on a tabletop game for the last year and a half that deals with themes of ecological change (Mappa Mundi, go check out our recently-funded Kickstarter), I find these concepts extremely compelling. Avowed takes them to interesting places, and by the end of the game, the player's influence stretches beyond that of a mere political tool, becoming either a savior of nature or at the very least an instigator of change in the wilds.

All of this is the epitome of natural fantasy, I think. Avowed is far from the only property to investigate these things - Breath of the Wild showcased a similar flavor in video games, Princess Mononoke and pretty much all of Hayao Miyazaki's work does the same in the realm of anime, and I'll insert another shameless plug here for Mappa Mundi as an up and comer in the tabletop space. But Avowed does so with a wonderfully beautiful sheen - mushrooms really are so prevalant everywhere, those with mycophobia should be aware - and some of the best designs for dryads and other plantlike humanoids that I've seen in recent memory.

I was not aware of the term 'natural fantasy' when I first began working on Mappa Mundi or playing Avowed, and I'm not sure how 'official' this subgenre classification is. But I realize now that I've always been pulled towards these tales. The Mana/Seiken Densetsu franchise remains one of my fondest JRPG series, with an overarching plot that revolves around a world fed by magic from a giant Mana Tree. My first D&D character was a ranger, my first World of Warcraft character was a druid, and I've typically gravitated towards all of the other classes that I mentioned at the start of this post. And when I even think back to how I first fell in love with the fantasy genre in the hands of Tolkien, it was the pastoral existence of hobbits in a make believe version of nature-infused England that got me. (As I get older, I lust for the life of a hobbit more and more, second breakfasts included.)

Musing on this reality makes me chuckle, as I wouldn't consider myself an 'outdoorsy' or 'nature' person in day-to-day life, at least as far as those terms are defined by most people. I don't like going on hikes, and while I've been camping before as a boy scout, I tend to prefer the comfort of my own bed above all else. But perhaps there are more ways than one to feel an appreciation towards the planet we occupy, just as there are oodles upon oodles of fantasy subgenres waiting to be defined by products like Fabula Ultima (which really is a great TTRPG; go play it). In my case, I'm very happy to study my appreciation for natural fantasy through Avowed and similar tales, which in turn make me feel both the pulsations of this living land and the desire to save and serve it, in my own deeply personal way.

[alpaca-clouds]

Christian Mythology - and the Meaning of Magic

In 2020 I wrote my essay collection on colonial ideas in science fiction and fantasy. And if there was one essay among the 20 I have written in that year, that I would really love to see professionally published it is the one I have written on magic. Because I think that is an issue not explored enough in the way we talk about those things.

Western folks tend to be a bit haughty when they talk about other cultures. Often you will hear them speak about another religious practice and go: "Yeah, those people believe in magic. Did you know that?"

If someone notes something like this towards me, I will go: "And you believe that a priest during mass transforms wine and bread into blood and flesh. How exactly is that not magic?"

And the answer will usually be: "Yeah, but nobody believes that is literally what happens!"

To which I will say: "So, on what do you base the assumption that this other culture believes that literal magic happens?"

So, here is the issue. We kinda consider it normal to use whatever implicated magical stuff from other cultures and religions in our fantasy novels. If you write Urban Fantasy or Historical Fantasy, nobody will usually bat an eye at the idea of bringing in demigods that are kids of any deity of other magical entity from that mythology. You can use gods from those mythologies as your bad guy on any day, even the "good gods". Sure, a few folks will be bothered, but all in all most people think that is fine.

Heck, in some cultures it might even be a somewhat actively practiced religion they themselves will use in their media. Anime certainly is not hesitant about using Shinto deities in their stuff, right?

However, when we go over to the Abrahamitic stuff, it is suddenly very different. Can I use a golem without it having anti-semitic implications? And how will people react if I have Jesus, or Mohammed, or God show up? (The fact that Islam at least does not want you to depict either in any visual way does not make that easier, mind you.) How will they react if I have either character show up as a bad guy?

Now, in non-majority-Christian cultures this is easy. I can name you a couple of japanese media that indeed have the Christian God as a main antagonist (Angel Sanctuary, my beloved) and borrow heavily from Christian mythology in the same way some weeboo authors in the west might bring in Susanoo in their cool hot fantasy property.

And I can guarantee you, when I talk about the bible as Christian Mythology, and do it in a public setting, there will at least be one Christian, who will gasp out loud at the implication that anything in the bible might be mythology.

Now, this has not stopped authors from using this mythology in their media exactly. There is a lot of Jesuses showing up in American Gods, and even though I have not watched more than 6 episodes of Supernatural, I am aware that Jesus and God show up as characters in that show.

And of course there is Dogma, that good old movie, that has Alan Rickman as Metatron.

Chances are, however, that even with something like Supernatural, that all in all has a lot of conservative ideals and definitely is very pro-Christian, there will be some people who will becry the depiction of God, Jesus, and what not as elements of a Fantasy story.

And this leads to a weird phenomenon: A lot of media that generally seems to work on "Clap your Hands if you Believe" (aka, everything humans believe in is real) very awkwardly shrugs with the shoulders, as soon as Christian mythology comes up. It will be like: "Oh, yeah, Greek gods are totally real here. Yeah, Shinto gods, too. And the Zulu and Yoruba gods, also absolutely a thing. Oh, yeah, some souls end up in the Duat and will be judged by Osiris. God? Heaven and Hell? Uhm... Uhm... I am not quite sure what you are talking about, hehe. Do not mind that. Anyway. We also have an Underworld."

I noted this on a couple of Castlevania servers, because Castlevania Nocturne kinda confirms my suspicion that this world does also work on "Clap your Hands" as a basis. Or at least it strongly implies it. Yet, while we see the supposed "hell" in season 3... If the show was a person, they would start profusely sweating, if you asked them about the Christian God and Jesus.

And mind you, Castlevania is not alone with this. My traditional writing genre has always been Urban Fantasy. And I can name you so many both good and bad Urban Fantasy series, that will just assume it as normal that deities from ten different pantheons are running around the setting, but will never quite answer whether Christianity is also true in that setting.

There is a reason for this, of course. And the reason is not just that the Abrahamitic religions are more political. But it is also... If Christianity in a world is explicitly said to work by the same logic and rules as all those other religions... It is no longer special.

So, basically atheists, who usually will play way nicer with pagans, will be pissed because Christianity is real. And Christians will be pissed, because Christianity is not "special". So in the end, the creators of those shows kinda sidestep the issue and just... leave it as an open question.

And mind you: One partially written Urban Fantasy story I have is "Heaven's Heist" (I love alliterations). Which is basically about a conspiracy in Heaven and how Jesus teams up with a group of demigods to kidnap God from heaven, because heaven these days is run by some of the angels, given that God has severe mental issues - as "Clap your Hands if you Believe" is actually really bad for the mental health of a deity, if there are millions of humans who believe you are kind and forgiving, and millions, who believe that you are wrathful and ready to bring down a next flood.

Yes, that story very much is a commentary on religious politics, played a bit for satire. But let's face it, there would be some Christians who would be pissed at the idea.

[altocat]

What do you think Sephiroth had to do to be good, assuming he couldn't simply quit ShinRa, him staying meant he had to kill his friends who deserted and him deserting meant he had to kill his friends who stayed with ShinRa and were sent to eliminate him? And Rufus was itching for a new war in Wutai?

I mean obviously, the same thing Rosen and Angeal did, but other than that?

I think "goodness", at least in the context of fiction and not reality, is a more morally gray concept in the world of FFVII. Sephiroth kills people under Shinra. But it's not personal. It's not because he takes pleasure in the act of killing. Even our heroes kill people. And there's a lot to be said about the real world ethics of people who kill in the line of duty when at war or under orders, which is honestly subjective. Whether you view people who kill under orders as "good" or "bad" is honestly up to the individual. You could certainly make a case for either side of the debate.

So with that said, I personally believe that while Sephiroth's actions were inherently awful under Shinra, within the moral framework of the universe and story, he's still a somewhat decent person. "Good", but because I can separate his morality as a singular entity from the actions he's forced to take. A person who has likely committed several atrocities, but is mainly a product of an environment in which he has no real agency. Angeal and Genesis are also in there, but to lesser degrees. Glenn and Zack below them. All of these characters are "bad" in theory for their actions under Shinra. But they WANT to be "good" and are shown to at the very least be capable of great kindness or potential. Some of them even die because of it. And when your in-universe moral afterlife features the same endgame for everyone, then yeah. You can be lenient. I think the lines would blur way more significantly if they were real people, but they're not. They're fictional characters. So the viewer can choose to engage with their shaky morality on a more personal level that leaves room for empathy.

SO with all that rambling out of the way, I do think Sephiroth had options. He could have retired. He could have bided his time and waited for the organization to eat itself. He could have joined Genesis under the pretense of "helping" him while actively collaborating with Zack. And he honestly could have just booked it out of there. He's strong enough to where he could at the very least held Shinra off for a time, grueling and exhausting though it would have been. There are parts of the globe that Shinra still hasn't gotten its hooks in. There was what was left of Glenn's team. And Avalanche. Sephiroth had OPTIONS, there were just various factors that delayed his decision. Sephiroth was still in the process of fully questioning his role under Shinra. And just as he's about to commit to an idea the Nibelheim Incident coincidentally takes place, likely thanks Hojo's manipulations. It was bad timing all around. The worst possible circumstance at the worst possible time.

[scr-ppup]

@ Scr-ppup | 🪦👁️

—"Even the divine of the mercy and prayers will not help you..

"For I will still smite your ass to the oblivion's growing hunger."—

- liomogai: neogenders, general & alterhumans flags and terms.

- request status: open

Ask box: — (24 requests) | queue: 35 | drafts: 500+

Creds; PFP mask.

Coinfight info link; team Villains.

Anons; 🌊����‍⬛,

— "sir, If the hounds don't kill you, I will make sure I have your head at my feet by sundown."

"You hear me, old bastard?"—

> my main is @ Reveseke and that's where I'll be interacting from. Don't get spooked lol.

> here's my pronouns cc & pronouns.page

> I am neurodivergent & disabled, 06/18 & genderqueer, Finnish entity, transspecies, alterhuman & holothere.

> Call me mainly Koiri or Ashlin on this blog, or Kalma.

> I don't have a DNI for my terms and flags, but I do block folks that are specified in my BYF if following. :)

> please use tone tags with me, it makes it easier for me to interpret y'all when it comes to answering questions and interactions in general. I have a tendency to interpret the tone wrong in text. Also please don't use fonts or colored text in the asks, thanks.

Masterlist nav. — req list - tag nav.

— "The world didn't go too easy on you, did it, Kalma?"

BYF

- I belong into quite a few blankqueer/-punk stances in some way; reclaimed feralqueer, hallowpunk, redemptionqueer, darlingqueer, yandequeer, (ally) rabiespride, eepyqueer, para-health, Beastpunk, mangledqueer, Sataniqueer & freakqueer.

None of these labels will override *my* stances that I've laid in my BYF. Beware of this. (Also I'm going to get all the links in a bit lol.)

I am anti harassment, pro-para - anti-contact (+ a para myself) & pro- safe recovery, anti-censorship & I'm peacefic. I'm pro good-faith / contradicting terminology, I believe everyone has a unique sense of self and should be able to use the terms and call themselves what they want to reflect themselves. I stand with the 4B, land-back, black lives matter movements, and pro decolonization.

My political view is anarcho-leftist, however I do not go into that side much since this is a hobby blog.

I am not interested in ship- or syscourse and I find radical pros and antis extremely harmful from both discourses. Do not include me in them. (Besides I'm singlet thus I don't think someone calling themselves endo or supporting or not supporting them is something I should be "included in" on or concerned by. Pro & anti endos alike can interact if they want, just know where I stand and don't break your own DNI for the sake of it.)

Also, those who cannot separate fiction from reality or glorify and romanticize real-life murderers, S/A, mafias, criminals, and so on, you're not even on the thin ice if you follow me you will be blocked.

I do not fuck with (read: i am a heavy anti of) wrongfully used harmful transid folks, rad./queers, xeno.satanists. white supremacists, nationalists, facists, or racists & ableist at all. (Neo) Na.zis and supporters/apologists, pro-colonialists and -capitalists, pro-cop / blue lives matter / all lives matter believers. Neither do I fuck with those who glorify, romantize, or demonize (or speak over folks with) mental illnesses, personality disorders or disabilities.

Also label lumpers and exclusionists (""bi-spec"", aros to aces, aphobics, transphobic, multitransphobic, intersexists, etc), queer-phobic/anti-LGBTQIA+ folk. SW-/TERFs, Radfems, misogynist & misandrist alike; sexists in general. + folks who suibait, witch-hunt, and harass others or condone/support it.

—"you look like an animal, a cornered hound baring its teeth in front of certain death..."

Themed after a CoD oc named Kalma.

—

Questions are always welcome, but please bear in mind that if the question is asked in noticeably bad Faith it will not be answered unless I feel the need to answer it because it's important.

[literaticat]

So I recently saw a book announcement where the plot is about the history & life of a real famous person (as in not fictional) but it's written by a fan and doesn't involve the famous person at all. I'm just curious - can anyone publish books about famous people? Cant they sue also because it's based on them? Or is there really no legal implications? This is pubbed by a big publisher.

THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE I AM NOT YOUR LAWYER I AM NOT A LAWYER AT ALL. If you have concerns about this, please take them to an actual lawyer.

Generally speaking: You can write a biography / history / book about a famous person/celebrity, politician, business entity, etc.

They (or their estate) COULD sue if what you wrote is libel / defamation -- but they would probably have to prove in court that not only is what you wrote false, but that it is reputation/business damaging, AND that you acted maliciously in writing the lies.

If you aren't lying, and you didn't break any laws in gaining the info you have, they don't really have grounds to sue. Here's some more info.

When I say "lies" here, btw, I mean ACTUAL LIES, stating something is a fact when it is not a fact -- that's not the same thing as stating your opinion, even if it is negative.

"Trump seems like the kind of guy who kicks dogs" is my opinion, and it doesn't matter if I publish that or shout it from the rooftops, he really can't do shit about it (unless he changes the laws lol, which, hey, maybe he'll get around to doing!)

"Trump came to my house and kicked my dog" is a lie. That, he could probably sue me for, if he cared, and he might very well win, unless I was obviously telling a joke or something like that.

If I did an interview with a trusted source who had a first-hand eyewitness account of dog-kicking, I'd probably want to fact check them in some way and get confirmation -- but if I published "according to [source], Trump kicked a dog while visiting Arlington Cemetary" -- and it turns out the incident is a little more nuanced than that / not quite right, hey, I'm just publishing what somebody said and I have reason to believe, he could (and probably would) TRY to sue, but it'd be hard to prove malicious intent, and he probably wouldn't win.

If I illegally wire-tapped Trump and overheard him talk about kicking dogs, well, I did something illegal to gain that info, soooo....

[screen-universe-official-thingie]

Welcome! Here is the guide to the Screen Universe for beginners. The Basics of the basics

What is Screen Universe? Screen Universe is a world that takes place behind the screen, what happens behind the TVs, the phones, the computers, all that stuff. Each part of the universe is separated into three main realms, all of which has creatures living in them. What are those creatures?

Fictionals: First off, the Fictionals! They are your favorite and not so favorite characters you see in animated media and video games. The characters responsible for the stories you consume, the instrument of your entertainment! And sometimes the ones who shape your childhood. But beware! They are not always what they seem. In fact, they're merely just actors, whose entire existence is to put up a show or a game for unknown entities.

Their stories, worlds, everything in their canons are all just an act! They may or may not be so different from their respective personas. A villain playing one may turn out to be nicer than their character, or a hero playing one being crueler than what they're shown for the camera, or perhaps closer or similar to the real deal. Who knows that they're truly like behind their masks. Interestingly enough, they can't or refuse to physically break character despite being mentally and emotionally different from them. meaning they must keep their bodies and names, their persona's identities. Why they can't do that is a mystery.

Weblings: They are creatures of the Internet realm, the embodiment of social media accounts and the product what their users do with them. They may be kind, an ass, or something worse. They either stay where they are or transverse to other realms. The rotten apples of their kind are usually the ones who pick fights with not just each other, but Fictionals too. Their appearance may vary from which part of the Internet Realm they are from.

Mancers: The deities of Screen Universe, the creators of both the Internet realm and the Fictional realm. They also create the Fictionals, their acting worlds, and direct them on what to do for their projects. As all mighty as they seem, they're just mortals, humans. They can die at any given time and can not be revived. What are those three realms? They are the Fictional Realm, the Internet Realm, and lastly the Memory Realm. Fictional Realm: Where the Fictionals hang out and take breaks from working on their series and being in character. There, they can also take on lives that may be entirely different or similar to their personas. They also form societies and territories, and much more.

Internet Realm: Where the Weblings are from. Each part of the realm are separated into different parts: media regions, Web sections, and many others. The media region are environments based on social medias and the weblings that reside within them

Memory Realm: The memory realm is the most interesting realm out of the others. It seemed to be always been around even way before the dawn of the Fictionals and Weblings combined, let alone have their respective realms created. It is the only realm Fictionals can't have easy access to and must meet very specific conditions to do so. The realm lives up to its namesake since it has recordings, both of the good and the bad, and contain permanently dead Fictionals, who'll remain a memory of the living.

Note that Fictionals are harder to kill and are functionally immortal. They must be killed in very specific conditions as well.

Other terminologies that'll be important for beginners

Ser-workers: The Fictionals' word for co-stars, they are those who work on the same series as them.

Rolcism: A form of discrimination where Fictionals judge and oppress each other for playing certain roles, usually the villain role. It can affect the other roles too and even the dynamic between actors both inside and outside of their on camera lives should some of them be rolcists.

Rolcists: Those who believe that they are better than others just because they play the "superior" role or believe that Fictionals of a certain role are worse than what they really are. Usually hero Fictionals are rolcists, but villain Fictionals can be rolcists too.

The Villainous Underground: A safe heaven for the villain playing Fictionals to hide from rolcists. The name of the place speaks for itself. It spreads across the undergrounds of the Fictional Realm, with an elaborated tunnel system that allows others to get around anywhere within the realm safely.

Acting Dimensions: Where the Fictionals' performances and project productions take place. They can be accessed via portal stations back in the Fictional Realm. A pocket dimension stage or an interdimensional studio basically.

Mascots: Certain Fictionals who are leaders of a territory and keep the place running and either keep it in great shape or abuse their power over it and the people in it. They are the representatives and the face of the territories they're from. The title is given to by the mancers. Examples of Mascots are SpongeBob, Mickey Mouse, and Mario.

Territories: They are large portions of land saturated in Fictionals of the same big animation or video game companies. They may have one mascot run the place (eg. Disney Kingdom), multiple mascots run it (eg. Nintendo Empire), a mascot and a council (eg. Nick Nation), or no mascot at all and only ran by a collective of non mascot Fictionals (eg. certain territories).

[bearmemesreviews]

FotW: SDMI - The Song of Mystery

Well, it looks like we have a special case on our hands, as we have not one but TWO creatures for our fifth MI review. For this occasion, we'll do things a little differently than usual. Can our new ghouls beat the Crab Man as our current contender for best monster so far? No.

However, we still have to review them so let's talk about Que Horrifico and the use of Mayans in Horror Media. Yeah, we gotta address this at some point. Cultural influence is unavoidable in all genres, but there is a tendency to use a very quickly researched creature or even deity from other cultures to give a name to what might as well be an original demon or spirit in a kids cartoon or other horror media. This can range from passible, and sometimes informative, deep cuts in mythology getting representation in the mainstream for future creators to further research and enjoy - or it can result in what happened to many Indigenous Spirits I cannot name.

Not gonna' go deep into the Cannibal Deer furries white people call a name you aren't even supposed to state if you don't want to bring misfortune upon yourself but understand that I think the "let artists do what they want" mantra is a cowardly and reductive way to excuse poor research and abysmal treatment of Non-White folklore. Though sometimes, like today's episode, we're just talking about a fully original entity who's meant to "evoke" a culture rather than represent it.

Lets talk about the Made-up Mayan Monster from the talking dog show.

Backstory: During a random stint of babysitting for Daphne (genuinely the weirdest member of the gang to use for this role, and she never does this again), she hears a pan flute being played outside of her kid's house. Before she can check it out, a commotion draws her to the boy she was sitting to find him transformed into a monster. Now "Spookified", as the show puts it, the child proceeds to attack Daph and chase her out of the house.

The kid doesn't follow her as she runs outside, but Daphne soon discovers that the entire neighborhood has had its children turned into monsters. Before the intro, we see the mummified pan flute player disappear into some mist.

Daphne draws the rest of the gang into the mystery, and they soon discover that the entire town of Crystal Cove has slowly been overrun by the monster kids. The adults in town - including those without children possibly? - are then literally driven away, unable to return to their homes as the kids remain Spookified even during daytime hours. Effectively abandoning their kids to their own bestial devices.

This will not be the worst parenting you'll see in this show.

The first suspect, and not just for the Mystery Gang, is Luis de Potrillo, an exchange teacher for Honor's Social Studies. It is through his class that the cast find out about the fictional "legend" of Que Horrifico, who has no real origin but acts as a Pied Piper-esque boogeyman for South America.

Mr. Potrillo also suspects himself, believing that he's turning into the monster like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Sometimes these weird one-off characters show up in future episodes, but it feels odd when some just drop off the face of the earth like this guy. Especially since he's one of the few adults in town who don't treat the gang like garbage.

Reveal: The culprit is fairly obvious since she's the only other newly introduced side character of the episode, child genius and Fred's current Civics tutor Mary Anne Gleardan. The children turn out to not be actual monsters, as a turned-on television eventually makes them break character just to sit down and watch a cartoon. The kids were merely dressing up as miniature ghouls at the behest of Mary Anne who promised them "Utopia" - before finally getting their full cooperation with the promise of free candy instead.

Jamie Neutron here wanted to be part of the Town's council, since she's obviously smart enough to actually run it, but was rejected for her age. And like most child geniuses, she had the technical skill and smarts to create a convulated scheme to scare every adult out of Crystal Cove to turn it into some kind of Kinderstate. However, she still retains the child-like logic of not realizing what that actually entails since she'd have to eventually create her own police state filled with nothing but toddlers in Halloween makeup.

They canonically throw this child into jail for how much money the town wasted on trying to merchandise Que Horrifico.

Design: Que Horrifico, which you can tell with a rudimentary knowledge of Spanish means "How Horrific", is a "Mayan inspired" monster that is otherwise a fully original creature. It wears a semi-golden mask and ragged poncho based on the South American culture. Its mask is evocative of a monkey, with those Rangda teeth that jut outwards and "earring"-like shapes built beneath its molded ears. There's a metal piece attached to the "hat" that's also part of the mask, resembling those antennae-shaped features you'd see on a samurai helmet.

The show surprisingly never makes an Egyptian mummy, which is a staple of Scooby-media, and instead makes Que Horrifico a mummified ghoul with dull blue skin, black nails, and tattered bandages wrapped around most of its body with a few gaps for easier movement. Its hair is also long and white, connecting its design to the Spookified kids in a cool way.

As for The Spookified, they all resemble the child extras under the makeup, but with longer white hair and eyebrows, clawed extremities, fangs, and glowing yellow eyes. They mostly act like Gremlins and use their youthful energy to leap and flip around like a swarm of fast zombies. They're clothing is also torn up a bit, and they resort to hissing and growling while in-character.

I'm at odds with Que Horrifico, though I think the creature kids are a decent design for what amounts to a non-zombie "Horde". It feels odd how they avoided actually drawing any inspiration from real mythology and mostly did a South American "take" on the Pied Piper. It's not even bad, just weird, but as a Horror enthusiast who's experienced the way media and their fandoms butcher cannibal spirits and Hoodoo it does make me more forgiving when a show plays it safe.

In a way, I feel like Que Horrifico WOULD exist as a folktale, but specifically one made up by locals to scare tourists into behaving better. ESPECIALLY, if they're dragging their kids along for the trip. It's design is also just really cool, I can't comment on the mask because it could just be utter nonsense from a Geographical or Historical standpoint - I'm not the crazy teacher, I don't know what those masks specifically mean.

From a quick glance though, the semblance to a monkey might be intentional because Howler Monkeys in Maya culture are considered wise and are often connected with artistry - fitting both the culprit and her gimmick.

Final Ratings

Que Horrifico: 4/5

The Spookified: 3/5

Hmmm, maybe I should review the creature design of Maya and the Three...

[thenightling]

Slender Man (a small debunking and hypothetical)

I am in several supernatural and folklore groups on Facebook and recently one of them had a thread about Slender Man full of misinformation.

In June 2009 Slender Man made his first appearance in memes and creepy-pastas. Eric Knudsen AKA Victor Surge is credited with creating the fictional character. The character was a tall, bone-white figure in a dapper suit. There were various forms of lore invented for the character. But the most annoying thing about this new character was the retroactive attempt to make him "folklore." For some 4chan members it was a game to convince people that Slender Man had always existed in lore and to get "Legitimate" cryptid sites to post about him as if he was potentially real. Lots of people fell for the 4chan related efforts to pretend that Slender Man always existed in folklore. One "origin" was "Der Gross Mann." ignoring that this is very bad German, this was an attempt to tie Slender Man to old European Giant folklore and many people (mostly Americans with limited knowledge of actual folklore) fell for it. I had thought this misinformation died down in the last fifteen or so years but this new Facebook thread I read had a lot of comments of "But he is folklore." and "My grandfather used to tell me stories about Slender Man." No. Honey. No, he didn't. And "But Slender Man dates back centuries!" and "But he is an actual cryptid. People have seen him!" There are many folkloric and even pop culture characters that helped inspire Slender Man. This includes The Boogey Man and even Jack Skellington from Nightmare before Christmas. Yes, the character created by twenty-something Tim Burton while working for Disney. To me Jack Skellington is an obvious inspiration. You have the bald, bone-white, extremely thin and tall, character, who apparently feeds on fear and can induce it easily.

The only way Slender Man can be real is if you believe in the phenomena called the Tulpa effect. What is the Tulpa effect? Loosely based on the Tulpa concept from Buddhism, it is when a collective belief in something is so strong that the thing becomes real through belief alone. This concept has existed in parapsychology for a long time and has often gone unnamed. My first exposure to this concept came from an episode of The Real Ghostbusters animated where where the collective belief in Sherlock and Watson was so strong that it allowed them to manifest as ghost-like entities. In Neil Gaiman's The Sandman several entities of The Dreaming are the manifestation of the collective ideas of well-known characters of story. The condition of being a werewolf (a lycanthrope) and the condition of believing one is a werewolf (Lycanthropy) are interchangable because the belief can be so strong as to have physical manifestation such as increased strength and even hair growth. Pseudocyesis or Phantom pregnancy can also have physical manifestations because of the belief that the pregnancy is real is so strong. It is believed that the Tulpa effect can (through a collective belief) manifest an entity of fiction into retroactively becoming real in the present and past. And this happens simply because the belief is strong enough to conjure the being into existence in the present as well as the past. Well, once you realize Slender Man is at least partly probably inspired by Jack Skellington from Nightmare before Christmas, if the Tulpa Effect is real, let's hope you enjoy accidentally invoking a fear-preying anthropomorphic personification of Halloween who happens to sing like Danny Elfman. Also if the Tulpa effect is real, we probably created Count Dracula by now so you may want to stock up on garlic about now. You have fun with that.

[saint-starflicker]

Prompts from this post.

1. What is the most valuable piece of advice you've been given about writing?

The most valuable piece of advice was also the most detrimental. It was a list of writing tips in a high school English class that would improve our style, and it did get me thinking more keenly about the gears and axles that make up a language. Too bad it got to me at a time in my life that I didn't have much creative flow, and that I would cling to those tips and suggestions as though it would save me from real life. I still recognize when passive voice is not the best choice, and how that is a choice now that it's been (heh) pointed out to me what passive voice even is—but flow and content becoming more important than style is what got me actually writing again. Your body of work is only as good as the collection of stuff in it that actually exists. I still value the style tips more because the prerequisite about creative flow and content is a very internal issue, whereas style was one that I actually got external guidance with.

2. Is your main villain sympathetic? Why or why not?

I have read the wildest woobification essays on this site, combined with the most inexplicable vitriol aimed at the most non-entity characters...so I don't know anymore what makes a designated villain sympathetic or unsympathetic.

During the writing process, I think it depends on the stakes. The closer to high fantasy the vibe is, the less sympathetic I can make the villain because I'm drawing on the image of the Panopticon dictator who lives beside Mt. Doom (insert the "Are we the Baddies?" skit meme here). I do believe that we can meet real evil in a more domestic genre, but see paragraph above about how there's no consensus about what that "evil" even is.

If I write annoying people with ulterior motives who leverage their power over somebody else's life, then in the process I can think that's very annoying, but somebody else might either think it's funny or alternatively think it's triggering/enabling of the worst thing in the world and in their life. Meanwhile, if I write somebody so horrible that they can hardly be there except for the rumored impact of their abuse on a character that I am more considerate of, then I can still expect some readers to take the sympathetic characters' flaws and use that to frame that character as the worst person that never existed—while the other character, that I think of as so evil that I launched them into plot orbit, in whatever little discourse I'm lucky enough to get around something I wrote can still become woobified in that discourse and get all this backstory and reframing imagined for them. And that wild misinterpretation is going to be all my fault somehow. 😆 That's just the way I've noticed things usually go if a story gets noticed at all, so I can't be too cross.

3. Which of your characters do you think has the most similar traits to you? Why?

They're all going to be filtered through my tint of glasses, at the same time that none of them are going to be me. There's what I think of as an "authorial scope" of vocabulary and observations, within which I can try to keep more variety or consistency as appropriate...but there's other areas that I'm definitely going to flounder at, or that I can recognize as an interesting idea but I know that I don't have it in me to even go there.

Unless I'm writing a memoir, the fictional character that's most like me will still have as much emotional distance from me as a character in the background or in the chorus. I think the characters that I actually get overly protective about are unlike me and that's why I'm biased towards there being more of them in the world because I don't have what that character has.