DELETE THIS POST

I had to turn this into an animation. I can't hold it in anymore.

Slash belongs to me

It sucks for people with terrible memories that forgetting about a thing is so often used as a way to indicate that someone doesn't care about it. I'm forget facts and details, names and faces, and I would love to not do that, but the strategies are mostly about using the equivalent of flash cards to try to burn whatever people expect me to remember into my brain. I'll sit with a group of new people and repeat their names like a litany, trying to make sure that it sticks. And sometimes it still doesn't!

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

How to turn off AI Training of your content on Web and Mobile:

On a Web Browser:

I had some trouble finding this option. My first instinct was to click the settings button on the left, but that's where it is!

First, you'll click the name of your blog on the left sidebar to bring it up on your browser.

Then click "Blog settings" on the right sidebar once your blog is brought up. That's where they're hiding it.

Click "Prevent Third-Party Sharing" under the Visibility section, and bam! You're done.

On Mobile:

Thankfully it's much easier on mobile. Just click the Gear icon on your blog's page, to go to settings.

Scroll all the way down until you see Visibility, then toggle the Prevent third-party sharing option for your blog!!

If you disable this setting on mobile, it automatically synced it to my web browser settings, too. ...But if you use both Web and Mobile, I would still highly recommend double checking that it actually turned off on both!!

Check that it's turned off on your side blogs too! And check your settings every now and then anyway to ensure that it's staying turned off, because if my memory serves right, some other websites will pull some shenanigans on things like this and opt you back in without telling you!

Leave Feedback on New Features at Tumblr Support Here!! Let Staff know however we can that having our content fed to AI at their whim is unacceptable.

And if you have the option to poison your art with Nightshade or Glaze, keep it up!!

You show up for your first day at Copyright-Free Magic School. As you're going through orientation, you're informed that all new students get a school-assigned familiar that they are responsible for housing and maintaining. The staff member assures you that your assigned familiar is appropriately chosen and reflects you in some way.

Spin this to find out yours. (Remember, you are responsible for maintaining this familiar in your dorm room.)

Collaborative writing is a labor of love. What if it could be easier? 

Think connected drafts, not disconnected files. 

Think effortless version history and control. 

Think in-document chat. 

Far away from the prying eyes of AI and LLMs.

Ellipsus is a new writing tool for people who write together!

Two new features have arrived this week: Comments and Dark Mode! :D

We’re looking for feedback from folks who care a lot about writing.

Check us out, and join the Ellipsus beta.

This is literally so cool, I love komodos- :3

Komodo dragons have iron-tipped teeth, new study shows

Komodo dragons, the world’s largest species of lizard, have iron-tipped teeth that help them to rip their prey apart, according to new research. The metal is concentrated in the cutting edge and tips of their curved, serrated teeth, staining them orange, scientists wrote in a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. Komodo dragons are native to Indonesia and weigh around 80 kilograms (176 pounds) on average. They eat almost any kind of meat and are known as deadly predators...

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/24/science/komodo-dragons-iron-teeth-scli-intl/index.html

where is any higher quality version of this image

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.