Me Who's Extremely Shy And Not Used To Having Mutuals. Like I Wanna Talk But At The Same Time I'm Just

Hi! White writer here, I’ve been going through your folklore tag and didn’t quite see what I needed to know. Anyways I’m working on a novel which features a town populated exclusively by preternatural/supernatural beings, which acts as something of a sanctuary for beings from all over the world. There’s more than one of these towns, again all over the world, but people immigrate. Anyways my question is about folklore and respectfulness? I don’t want to turn anything into a stereotype or be (a)

(B) disrespectful with cultures which, obviously, aren’t mine. It’s a small town and there’s a lot of borderline horror in the story, but I guess I’m asking about any recommendations on how to not end up reducing them to stereotypes. (This includes things like kappa, ghosts, various types of vampires, werewolves and shifters, fae, etc. no wendigos, I did read that post.) sorry if this is too broad or anything similar! If you’ve any advice though I’d really appreciate it!

Using folklore respectively

The key is showing a balanced perspective.

Every folklore, belief system, and religion has good and evil forces. The problems happen when you start to pull too heavily from the good or evil sides of any one folklore belief set.

For example, your kappa— do you have any positive Shinto forces in there? Or are you just pulling the monsters? If you’re just pulling from the monsters, especially if you’re pulling mostly marginalized belief system monsters, that’s where it gets very, very troublesome.

This might mean your core cast has to shrink down to account for a balanced perspective, and a few chaotic forces, and/or you’ll have to be careful with side characters to mention them (like, a line of dialogue about how a negative force is a threat and a positive force from the same belief system is handling it), but this is your basic formula for using folklore.

You’ll also have to be careful not to discredit certain beliefs that might make people uncomfortable (it has been expressed a few times that adding Judaism and Islam to all-myths-are-true gets touchy), so that sort of research will be required.

Bonus points that you learn more about each individual set of beliefs and end up more likely to stray away from pop culture sensationalist lists that focus on the weird Other Folklore. By spreading your focus to the less written about but just as important good characters, you create the sense of something whole.

I would also suggest considering looking at how each folklore treats good and evil. Western views tend to treat it as end points— evil is defeated [end], evil wins [end]— while other belief systems are more likely to acknowledge that good and evil will always coexist and the key is keeping them in balance.

As for the Wendigo:

It isn’t completely off limits. What that post is referencing is making sure to use the Wendigo in its original context. This means having it be a villain/ force of pure evil, and having some good Native beliefs to balance it out.

For example: if the Wendigo (or any other marginalized demon) is defeated by a Christian witch, that would have colonialist overtones by showing the “savage marginalized beast” be subdued by “good Christian people.” Even if you had a non-Christian European belief, that turns to “civilized Europeans.” There’s a lot of racism in this option. 

Meanwhile, if you had the Wendigo defeated by Wisakedjak (or the equivilent heroic figure in a marginalized belief system), then the Wendigo is being defeated by an equal, showing a balanced representation of the beliefs. You end up showing internal processes for handling our own demons, showing our cultures more thoroughly.

Tl;dr: so long as you show good and bad parts of the folklore, and don’t make blends that end up stepping on toes/are colonialist in the form of Europe Being Better, you’re worlds ahead and with proper research can flesh it out.

~ Mod Lesya

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MEEEOOWW

hi hun :3

Oh my god- HEY! ✨

Unexpected Guests: Begin!

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It’s been a while since I’ve drawn any comics, but I dusted off everything I’ve learned to turn a short fic I was working on into this! Expect silliness, shenanigans, and some feels as the story unfolds–hopefully every Thursday, possibly more frequently as my schedule allows. For now, enjoy! And I hope you’ll keep reading ^^

I don’t think I’ve talked much about having a service dog on here, but maybe I should

Boom used to be my service dog, I got him the summer before my last year of high school bcuz I needed a nurse 24/7 to ensure I could eat/sleep/stay alive due to a recent very traumatizing event in my life and my mom came up with the service dog idea.

Getting him was hard. And expensive. No trainers were up to my standards. I, who could barely take care of myself, had to train my own dog. The problem is no matter how hard I worked, my own family or other trainers would ruin it all by messing up my commands, by letting my dog do things I had trained him not to do. It wasn’t training anymore, I ended up simply having breakdowns because everyone kept ruining my dog. People close to me thought they could be an exception to the rules I had taught my MEDICAL AID because surely my DOG would learn the difference between them and strangers.

Eventually I brought him to school. Printed papers explaining what a service dog was and how to behave around him and I plastered them all over the place.

People barked at him, petted him, tried to grab his attention.

His harness was hot pink, patches and signs on it that very clearly said “DO NOT TOUCH” and shit like that.

Someone defaced one of the papers.

Going to school was already hard, I could barely leave the house, my mom had to accompany me to the school doors every morning and then a social worker at school would greet me there and take care of me throughout the day.

I had my own locker at a floor mostly unoccupied so I wouldn’t see other people much and my dog wouldn’t be too distracted.

But it was still to much and I ended up dropping out four months before graduation.

I couldn’t leave the house. I had Boom but he wasn’t perfect yet. People kept ruining him.

But eventually I managed to leave the house. Go to a shopping mall from time to time with him to just walk and have fun.

Too many times people came up to me to tell me the gear I used was hurting my dog. Too many times people came up to me to tell me that their own dog died. Too many people came up to him and pet him without even acknowledging my presence. Too many people telling me they wished they could bring their pets anywhere. Too many people disrespecting me and my service dog.

I stopped going out. I stopped being with my dog.

All this stress and trauma drove a wedge between my dog and I. I consider him my mother’s dog now.

I had to learn to handle myself alone when I went out. It took me years to learn to go out by myself. Only last year I started doing that.

My dog doesn’t live in my room with me anymore.

Having a service dog did still save my life. But those around me ruined that. They made it about themselves. They prioritized my dog over me. My dog that LOVES working. If you tell him “do you want to go to work” chances are he’ll get so excited he will attempt to do a backflip.

We used to have a deep bond. That bond is now broken. People took that from us.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is:

Let people and their service dogs alone.

You are not an exception.

You are not special.

You are disrupting the dog’s training and distracting it.

You are endangering a human life because you can’t resist petting the cute dog.

This isn’t about you. This is about a disabled person trying to simply live their lives.

You don’t know what you’re talking about, your advice is unsolicited and lacks understanding of what the life of a working dog is.

Just leave us alone.

No matter how much you dislike your own writing, I promise you it’s better than AI

Day 40 - “Poisson d'Avril”, as the French say

Dusttale by Ask-Dusttale

I was working on a request, but then Peer took me by the throat and said, “I have a fantastic idea,” and so this was made. I will come back to this in 10 days, on Day 50 we will see the results of your labor.

And the first sticker represents the obligatory reblog by my main UTMV blog. And it’s a fish cause well, my blog is @/sinner-shark, and also because April Fish :) just-look up the origins of April Fools, it’s funny and fishy.

Fellas, fellas

Why on earth are you BUYING PHYSICAL HARDBOUND COPIES OF FANFICTION????

ACTUALLY WHY ARE YOU EVEN MAKING HARDBOUND COPIES OF FANFICTION TO SELL?!?!?!

IF ANY OF YOU DO EITHER OF THESE THINGS, GET OUT!! I AM NEVER SPEAKING TO YOU AGAIN.

In all seriousness though, authors on AO3 have begun to pull their works off of the site to avoid getting sued by people stealing their works to make a pretty bound book for profit. Entire accounts could be shut down as well.

Listen, I’m all for saving favorite works by printing them out and putting them in a binder, or learning how to make a book for a fanfic, but seeking them is where I draw the line.

Literally the entire point of AO3 is that you can read it FOR FREE.

It is DISRESPECTFUL for people to make money off of hardbound copies because guess what, the original creators of these fics get nothing. We are literally only writing fanfiction for our own pleasure.

Buying and selling book-bound fanfiction is also ILLEGAL YOU DUMB SHITS. It’s an immediate violation of copyright law. The original fan work will get erased from the internet.

Fanfiction is already a legal grey zone since they are works being written about are protected by copyright. Copyright holders can in fact go after writers as well as the person who sold the fanfiction.

This also goes for people who steal fanart and, claim it as theirs, and put a price on it.

Don’t make it worse.

Bookbinding fanfiction for profit is literally ruining things for everyone. DON’T.

Oh, look who I found in my bed.

Features include:

Removable shoes and jacket! And pants... (nothing to see under though)

Jacket! With zipper (not working), fluff on the hood (not fluffy), pockets (unusable)

He has gloves

Stupid cute little empty eyesockets that stare into your soul when you wake up covered in sweat at 4 am

Goop leaking out of eyes (don't worry it doesn't stain anything)

Perfect size to be squeezed (demonstrated in picture above)

No, the red thing is not a button, don't press it

It is recommended not leaving him in the kitchen, or anywhere with easy access to sharp objects. For no particular reason of course.

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