See, Our First Mistake Was Trying To Have A Civilization In Northern Europe Between October And February.

Extra History recently did a series on Nazis and the Occult, it's pretty good.

apologies if you've asked this before, but why were the nazis so into the occult? like what drew them in specifically?

Fascists love identifying with an ancient warrior culture that never existed, and they love to try and believe things until they become true. The occult mileu of the 1930s had both in spades.

Important to say though, a few important Nazis were really into the occult, but Hitler himself found it pretty cringe. Don't get it in your head that every Nazi was training to be a wizard or some shit. Read Nicholas Goodrick Clarke's book on the topic.

As someone who's been a lover of traditional folk music from the British Isles for several decades, one thing I've learned is that "True Love" didn't always mean what you think it means. In the older songs, "true love" is not some mystical quality, some type of connection that is magically better than other Loves. No. A love that is "true" merely means that your Love is "true TO YOU." "True" as in faithful and loyal and trustworthy. A lover who will stand by you and with you no matter what comes. True the way a good sword is True. True the way a good knight is loyal. The contrast is "False Love," which is a lover who betrays you, who cannot be trusted.

"True Love" isn't something you find, it's a vow and a choice that you make, every day, to BE TRUE.

now that trump has tiktok, twitter, facebook and insta in his pocket, get ready for a massive wave of internet censorship. one of trump's greatest weapons has always been misinformation; it's going to become harder and harder to spread facts and criticism going forward. posts that aren't made invisible will be magically ignored by the algorithm. dissidents will have their accounts deleted and voices erased.

this is a suppression tactic. this is another stage of fascism.

I also feel like it should be noted that what we call the "Original Myths" are just the oldest versions to actually be written down. Myths changed with the various cultures and times. Sometimes gods changed (for example Proto-Poseidon seems to have been the head god of Mycenean Greece, while Zeus is the head god of Ancient Greece), and sometimes the details changed (for example Medusa's various origins). I believe retellings of myths have been around since Christian era Rome at least.

So long as you aren't claiming that your version is the original (without sources to back it up), or that the myths said something that they actually didn't (such as Loki being a queer icon), it's fine to retell the stories.

Also how many Western stories echo stories from Christian mythology?

In defense of retellings & reimaginings

I'm not going to respond to the post that sparked this, because honestly, I don't really feel like getting in an argument, and because it's only vaguely even about the particular story that the other post discussed. The post in question objected to retellings of the Rape of Persephone which changed important elements of the story -- specifically, Persephone's level of agency, whether she was kidnapped, whether she ate seeds out of hunger, and so on. It is permissible, according to this thesis, to 'fill in empty spaces,' but not to change story elements, because 'those were important to the original tellers.' (These are acknowledged paraphrases, and I will launch you into the sun if you nitpick this paragraph.)

I understand why to the person writing that, that perspective is important, and why they -- especially as a self-described devotee of Persephone -- feel like they should proscribe boundaries around the myth. It's a perfectly valid perspective to use when sorting -- for example -- which things you choose to read. If you choose not to read anything which changes the elements which you feel are important, I applaud you.

However, the idea that one should only 'color in missing pieces,' especially when dealing with stories as old, multi-sourced, and fractional as ancient myths, and doing so with the argument that you shouldn't change things because those base elements were important to the people who originally crafted the stories, misses -- in my opinion -- the fundamental reason we tell stories and create myths in the first place.

Forgive me as I get super fucking nerdy about this. I've spent the last several years of my life wrestling with the concept of myths as storytelling devices, universality of myths, and why myths are even important at all as part of writing on something like a dozen books (a bunch of which aren't out yet) for a game centered around mythology. A lot of the stuff I've written has had to wrestle with exactly this concept -- that there is a Sacred Canon which cannot be disrupted, and that any disregard of [specific story elements] is an inexcusable betrayal.

Myths are stories we tell ourselves to understand who we are and what's important to us as individuals, as social groups, and as a society. The elements we utilize or change, those things we choose to include and exclude when telling and retelling a story, tell us what's important to us.

I could sit down and argue over the specific details which change over the -- at minimum -- 1700 years where Persephone/Kore/Proserpina was actively worshiped in Greek and Roman mystery cults, but I actually don't think those variations in specific are very important. What I think is important, however, is both the duration of her cults -- at minimum from 1500 BCE to 200CE -- and the concept that myths are stories we tell ourselves to understand who we are and what's important to us.

The idea that there was one, or even a small handful, of things that were most important to even a large swath of the people who 'originally' told the store of the Rape of Persephone or any other 'foundational' myth of what is broadly considered 'Western Culture,' when those myths were told and retold in active cultic worship for 1700 years... that seems kind of absurd to me on its face. Do we have the same broad cultural values as the original tellers of Beowulf, which is only (heh) between 1k-1.3k years old? How different are our marital traditions, our family traditions, and even our language? We can, at best, make broad statements, and of inclusive necessity, those statements must be broad enough as to lose incredible amounts of specificity. In order to make definitive, specific statements, we must leave out large swaths of the people to whom this story, or any like it, was important.

To move away from the specific story brought up by the poster whose words spun this off, because it really isn't about that story in particular, let's use The Matter of Britain/Arthuriana as our framing for the rest of this discussion. If you ask a random nerd on Tumblr, they'd probably cite a handful of story elements as essential -- though of course which ones they find most essential undoubtedly vary from nerd to nerd -- from the concept that Camelot Always Falls to Gawain and the Green Knight, Percival and the grail, Lancelot and Guinevere...

... but Lancelot/Guinevere and Percival are from Chrétien de Troyes in the 12th century, some ~500 years after Taliesin's first verses. Lancelot doesn't appear as a main character at all before de Troyes, and we can only potentially link him to characters from an 11th century story (Culhwch and Olwen) for which we don't have any extant manuscripts before the 15th century. Gawain's various roles in his numerous appearances are... conflicting characterizations at best.

The point here is not just that 'the things you think are essential parts of the story are not necessarily original,' or that 'there are a lot of different versions of this story over the centuries,' but also 'what you think of as essential is going to come back to that first thesis statement above.' What you find important about The Matter of Britain, and which story elements you think can be altered, filed off or filled in, will depend on what that story needs to tell you about yourself and what's important to you.

Does creating a new incarnation of Arthur in which she is a diasporic lesbian in outer space ruin a story originally about Welsh national identity and chivalric love? Does that disrespect the original stories? How about if Arthur is a 13th century Italian Jew? Does it disrespect the original stories if the author draws deliberate parallels between the seduction of Igerne and the story of David and Bathsheba?

Well. That depends on what's important to you.

Insisting that the core elements of a myth -- whichever elements you believe those to be -- must remain static essentially means 'I want this myth to stagnate and die.' Maybe it's because I am Jewish, and we constantly re-evaluate every word in Torah, over and over again, every single year, or maybe it's because I spend way, way too much time thinking about what's valuable in stories specifically because I write words about these concepts for money, but I don't find these arguments compelling at all, especially not when it comes to core, 'mainstream' mythologies. These are tools in the common toolbox, and everybody has access to them.

More important to me than the idea that these core elements of any given story must remain constant is, to paraphrase Dolly Parton, that a story knows what it is and does it on purpose. Should authors present retellings or reimaginings of the Rape of Persephone or The Matter of Britain which significantly alter historically-known story elements as 'uncovered' myths or present them as 'the real and original' story? Absolutely not. If someone handed me a book in which the new Grail was a limited edition Macklemore Taco Bell Baja Blast cup and told me this comes directly from recently-discovered 6th century writings of Taliesin, I would bonk them on the head with my hardcover The Once & Future King. Of course that's not the case, right?

But the concept of canon, historically, in these foundational myths has not been anything like our concept of canon today. Canon should function like a properly-fitted corset, in that it should support, not constrict, the breath in the story's lungs. If it does otherwise, authors should feel free to discard it in part or in whole.

Concepts of familial duty and the obligation of marriage don't necessarily resonate with modern audiences the way that the concept of self-determination, subversion of unreasonable and unjustified authority, and consent do. That is not what we, as a general society, value now. If the latter values are the values important to the author -- the story that the author needs to tell in order to express who they are individually and culturally and what values are important to them* -- then of course they should retell the story with those changed values. That is the point of myths, and always has been.

Common threads remain -- many of us move away from family support regardless of the consent involved in our relationships, and life can be terrifying when you're suddenly out of the immediate reach and support of your family -- because no matter how different some values are, essential human elements remain in every story. It's scary to be away from your mother for the first time. It's scary to live with someone new, in a new place. It's intimidating to find out that other people think you have a Purpose in life that you need to fulfill. It's hard to negotiate between the needs of your birth family and your chosen family.

None of this, to be clear, is to say that any particular person should feel that they need to read, enjoy, or appreciate any particular retelling, or that it's cool, hip and groovy to misrepresent your reworking of a myth as a 'new secret truth which has always been there.' If you're reworking a myth, be truthful about it, and if somebody told you 'hey did you know that it really -- ' and you ran with that and find out later you were wrong, well, correct the record. It's okay to not want to read or to not enjoy a retelling in which Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere negotiate a triad and live happily ever after; it's not really okay to say 'you can't do that because you changed a story element which I feel is non-negotiable.' It's okay to say 'I don't think this works because -- ' because part of writing a story is that people are going to have opinions on it. It's kind of weird to say 'you're only allowed to color inside these lines.'

That's not true, and it never has been. Greek myths are not from a closed culture. Roman myths are not sacrosanct. There are plenty of stories which outsiders should leave the hell alone, but Greek and Roman myths are simply not on that list. There is just no world in which you can make an argument that the stories of the Greek and Roman Empires are somehow not open season to the entire English-speaking world. They are the public-est of domain.

You don't have to like what people do with it, but that doesn't make people wrong for writing it, and they certainly don't have to color within the lines you or anyone else draws. Critique how they tell the story, but they haven't committed some sort of cultural treachery by telling the stories which are important to them rather than the stories important to someone 2500 years dead.

****

*These are not the only reasons to tell a story and I am not in any way saying that an author is only permitted to retell a story to express their own values. There are as many reasons to tell a story as there are stories, and I don't really think any reason to create fiction is more or less valid than any other. I am discussing, specifically, the concept of myths as conveyors of essential cultural truths.

A poem I made

Golden eyed child of the ancient one

Do you know what you have done?

An arm and leg your sacrifice

Your brother also paid the price

A powerful truth you now have met

A taboo that must be kept secret

The laws of nature you have broken

A foul thing has been awoken

The crimson stone you now seek

But what destruction shall it wreak

Blood and steel shall be your way

Until the dark and promised day

______________________________________________________________

I made this poem for a creative writing class, and wanted to share it.

Extremely specific scenario time:

Three dwarves - Gotrek Gurnisson, Senshi of Izganda, and Gimli, son of Glóin - are all put into the same room. The room is empty save for one table with three chairs, all appropriately dwarf-sized. None of them have their axes, but there is a loaded gun on the table. None of the three have been instructed on how to use it. The three of them are here to settle one question once and for all:

Are orcs edible?

The pastoralist fantasy of "modern life is too stressful so I should move to a remote area and do hard labor" is so funny

Finally making that post about Loki

I hate how many people look at Loki (especially with a post-Marvel lens) and act like the Christian writers turned him from a generally heroic gender-fluid god into a Satan-esque villain. It’s like these people only read the parts of the myths that support this claim and then ignore every other myth that Loki is in.

First off with the gender-fluid stuff, he only turns into a female three or four times (one of them is theorized to be Loki but never outright confirmed). All of these times are a different race (Horse, Aesir, Jotun), and all situational. The horse is to lure away Svadilfari and stop the builder from finishing Asgard’s wall , the Aesir (never stated what race his is here) is to accompany Thor as his bridesmaid to make sure the plan works (and probably watch Thor be embarrassed by the dress he’s wearing) (Þrymskviða), another as the Aesir to learn about Baldur’s weakness to mistletoe, and the final one is to stop Baldur from coming back to life after Loki got him killed. I’m pretty sure Loki turns into a bird more often. Finally in the Lokasenna, he and Odin insult each other for doing unwomanly things, Odin doing magic and Loki giving birth to children (yes plural), and then Frigg (or Freyja) pretty much tells them to leave their skeletons in the closets.

Secondly, there is a post I’ve seen a couple times (and it is what inspired me to make this post) by @incorrectnorse-quotes where they got a message saying Loki is a faithful husband. The problem with this is that it forgets that Angrboda exists. Loki has had sex with three people that with children coming from them, and he claims a fourth. The three he has children from are; Svadilfari (Sleipnir), Angrboda (Fenrir, Hel(a), and Jormungandr), and his wife Sigyn (Vali and Narfi). He (and Odin at one point) claims to have had sex with Thor’s wife Sif. That claim is said by Loki during the Lokasenna, after Sif says he can’t say anything bad about her.

Finally while I agree that he isn’t the devil figure some make him out to be, he definitely isn’t what I would consider a good person (some people seem to think he is the nicest person in Asgard). For example, he once completely plucked out a woman’s (Sif’s) hair, for no given reason (an event which led to the creation of Mjolnir). Another example is the murder of Baldur (which we are probably missing some context to, but I’m working off the context we have), where he gets Baldur killed for “complaining about nightmares of his death.” My final example comes from the Lokasenna again, where the entire story is “Loki crashes a party, uses an old oath to stop from getting kicked out, insults almost everyone at the party (except Thor), admits to killing Baldur, then leaves.”

Also I’m not sure what version of the builder myth OSP was using, but in the version I'm familiar with the Aesir only agree to a deal with the builder (after shorting his time from three seasons to one) because of Loki’s advice, which is why they have him fix the problem.

All things considered, Loki seems to be Asgard’s resident asshole and occasional problem solver.

For a more in depth look I’d recommend this essay by Reddit user u/rockstarpirate, where he talks also about Norse gender views. (Warning it’s 21 pages)

He better not come back next season. It’d be like Ultron in Avengers Assemble all over again. And by that I mean annoying.

Hey disabled people of Tumblr

If you had a disability where it was a body part not working (i.e. blindness, deafness, legs not functioning), and you had access to a way to fix it, that wouldn’t cause any long term problems (such as debt) why wouldn’t you fix it? I have both glasses and a heart condition, and if I could magic them away I would.

I’m asking this from the position of worldbuilding, as while designing the world for the story I’m writing I got to magic, and then healing magic, and began to wonder this. I also recently saw a post about JKR saying that disabilities would be “fixed” or “overridden” in her fictional world (does that include ADHD and Autism?). 

I’m wondering if there are any reasons people would want to keep these kinds of disabilities, as they (from what I can tell) have little to no upsides or positives (for example I’m pretty sure that working legs are more freeing than a wheelchair).

I’m not trying to be rude with this and I’d love to hear why people would choose to keep their disabilities.