When I was in middle school, I tried to learn how to crochet. I knew how to knit already, so I figured ‘how hard could it be’ and used my Christmas money on a brand new set of aluminum hooks and a how-to book.
To say it was difficult was an understatement. I spent hours pouring over my book, begging to gain some inkling of understanding from what felt like incomprehensible runes. My reward? One lopsided trapezoid of lumpy fabric and a resolve to never pick up a crochet hook again.
And so life went on, I finished middle school and high school without giving crochet so much as a second glance. In college, I read about how crochet couldn’t be replicated by a machine, it was unique in a way that knitting and many other fiber arts weren’t.
For Christmas last year, my girlfriend gave me what I now consider to be my most prized possession: a crocheted plush of my favorite pokemon. I raved over her skills and, since she never learned how to knit, we decided to have a yarn date at some point and teach each other our respective skills.
We never did get around to that yarn date. She passed a few months after our declaration, leaving me to inherit what was left of her yarn.
Nearly a decade after my initial attempt, I got ready for the toughest battle of my life. My weapons? One skein of yarn, a YouTube video, and a crochet hook that I had somehow never gotten rid of.
I slowly made my way through the video, redoing my work a couple times until I was satisfied with my product: a small, slightly misshapen rectangle.
I looked at my pristinely-made pokemon plush with hope for the first time in months and thought to myself, ‘maybe crocheting isn’t the hardest thing in the world, maybe you were just 12.’
Maybe this isn’t the hardest thing in the world. Maybe I’m just 21.
Ya know, ya gotta wonder if there's quirks in BNHA whose activation conditions are just... Not possible for pre-pubesent kids? Stuff that's hormonally based or requires specific pathways to exist in their brains?
I would say that logically, given the spread of quirks we've seen in canon, the chances of this kind of thing being possible is very high.
Or, if not, it's only because the quirks themselves alter the individual so that the activation ingredients are present regardless of whether or not they technically should be as a type of inbuilt, quirk-related mutation type of thing that expresses itself even before the quirk is technically activated.
As ironic as it would be, I am not going to blaze this poll, so maybe spread it around organically.
When marginalized people have analyses and theories about a text - be it a show, a movie, a book, or anything - those analyses are not “closed”
Any analysis based in the text is not a headcanon, it’s just a valid textual interpretation. And we create these interpretations, these “meta” as I’ll refer to them hereonout, not just for us. We see ourselves in the text, we see our own experience reflected back at us, and we want to share that.
When someone says “I identify with Crowley, because he questions G-d constantly, and is wrestling with the Devine Plan,” and our response is “We clearly identify Crowley as Jewish, because Wrestling and Questioning are Extremely Jewish traits,”*
The proper response is not to ignore that. The response is to recognize that you have something in common with the Jewish experience!
We create these meta and these explanations not just for us. For other people, it shows what our culture is like. It shows what it’s like to be a member of X group. It is for learning, and for sharing, and for spreading.
I see people reblogging tons of theories about characters that they’re a certain type of queer, or part of a disability community, or what have you - and those theories being spread by non-members of said communities. For example, ace headcanons, spread by non-aces. And that’s great! That’s wonderful! I partake in that (as a queer, disabled person) myself!
But I don’t see it happen a lot with Jewish headcanons - as if there’s a reluctance on the part of non-Jews to label anyone as Jewish who isn’t explicitly said to be. And, in this day and age of extreme antisemitism, that is dangerous. It perpetuates the idea that we are “other”, that unless it’s obvious someone’s Jewish, they can’t possibly be, because they pass as a non-Jew. You are perpetuating antisemitism, in a very subtle and non-conscious way, by not treating Jewish meta the same as other meta.
And maybe you don’t understand stuff. Isn’t that great???? Learning is AMAZING. I, personally, WELCOME every chance I get to learn something new! So you had to google what a Ketubah is, or the idea that all Jewish souls were present at Sinai. That’s amazing! Now you’ve learned something new!!! I’m so happy for you!!
It’s not appropriation to reblog and spread these theories like you do any other meta on Good Omens, or any other fandom. It’s appreciation, and it’s allyship. Maybe not the most important allyship, but allyship nonetheless - and, certainly, enough of a low effort one that you should be able to do it.
Partake with us, friends. Appreciate that we are able to see ourselves in the text. Celebrate our commonalities. Reblog our metas, our fanfictions, our fanarts. Engage with every interpretation of the text, even if it’s not one you subscribe to. You’ll be amazed at what you learn, what you appreciate - and how you grow as a person, from doing so.
*Yes, I know Good Omens is about Christian mythology. We all know that. It’s kind of hard to miss. Doesn’t it say something about Good Omens that we still see it’s Jewish influence (from Neil Gaiman, who wrote it and is Jewish)? Maybe, before you bring up complaints and simple contradictions to these interpretations, consider that we have, in fact, thought of that - and wonder why we still have these theories.
Jews and non-Jews should reblog this. That’s kind of the point.
This isn’t commonly known but one of the rings of hell is actually being in a fandom wherein the popular bloggers have the worst opinions known to man that everyone else parrots