thecrystalbladesystem

[thecrystalbladesystem]

Ughhhh as someone who loves learning about history and culture this is so stupid and annoying. Being Irish is a nationality not a fucking culture or ethnicity. The Irish people are ethnically Gaelic which is one of the many different ethnic groups within the Celtic clans which is a cultural grouping of various ethnic groups who either shared similar beliefs as well as specific physical characteristics

And as someone who happens to be ethnically Jewish why the fuck would we care if a name originally came from Judaism or not lmao?? Unless it's one of the various names of god such as the name Yahweh then there's literally nothing problematic about you know having a fucking name 😭 And it's also not like actual systems can pick and choose this shit anyways LMAO

I believed this happened a couple of years ago? But I'd thought it was a very peculiar experience for me to share.

So, I used to be in this traumagenic server with what seems like a lot of blacklists and claims to be POC friendly. It was one of our few DID/OSDD focused discord servers that we joined when we first suspected we have DID. (We got diagnosed a year later.)

I remembered being in a ticket with one of the mods because they looked at the names of our alters through pk. They then LITERALLY did some google research on the name origins and made it something like this.

" Hi! We noticed your names may be considered cultural appropriating blablabla

Casey = Irish

Ari = Jewish

Please consider changing your names!"

And then had the nerve to even ask me what my race is, but I felt so uncomfortable?? I said Asian. They want me to specify further. I said Southeast Asian. And if my memory serves me right, they wanted me to specify more than that.

When I looked at that message where I had to change my own and my alter's names, I felt like they were JOKING?? HOW IS CASEY A CLOSED NAME??? It's.. a generic name used by pretty much everyone in the world.

They mentioned how Irish is a closed culture, and I think they mentioned Irish discrimination during the US immigration and all. I understand, but at the same time, Irish itself isn't a closed culture at all?? Not to mention, I've been using Casey as my name for quite some time now.

Ari being linked to Jewish makes no sense to me either. People sometimes use it to shorten the name 'Ariana' for short, but I also see many non-Jewish people also using that name too.

Ari is an alternative spelling of our body's name, so we don't feel weird using our irl body's name (which is Arabic) to the people online. It's not a sense of shame of the body's name but more privacy concerns, easier pronounciation, and having our own individuality.

It's worth mentioning that a lot of Muslim and Christian names are derived from Judaism, too. The Muslim and Christian names just have a different spelling to it, so I don't know what the hell they were thinking.

I felt so mad and felt this was all too ridiculous. I had to keep my cool and leave because what kinda server is this??? That claims to be POC safe?? I'm sorry if I don't sound the most open-minded, but it's just a weird experience to me, really. When I think of cultural appropriating, I would think of taking a name from, let's say, a Romani name or a Tamil name, and then use it without realizing the significance of that culture just because it looks pretty for some aesthetic. Not whatever tf this server was pulling.

As an Irish system, what the fuck?? Casey is definitely not a "closed culture Irish name," LMAO?? You're not overreacting DW anon, that's just wild.

[thecrystalbladesystem]

Things women should never feel ashamed of:

• Orgasms

• Receiving money

• Receiving compliments

• Pretty privilege

• Being smart

• Dressing up

• Menstrual cycles

• Emotions and being sensitive

• Expressing our sexuality

• Resting and relaxation

• Asserting our sexual needs

• Maintaining our standards

• Saying No

• Wanting or having children

• Choosing to be childfree

• Our body count

• Our nude body

• Wearing makeup or not wearing makeup

• Having boundaries and protecting ourselves

• Our spiritual practices

• Using witchcraft

• Being ambitious

• Going to college

• Being a housewife or stay at home mom

• Loving who and what we love

[thecrystalbladesystem]

HAPPY TRANS VISIBILITY DAY MOTHERFUCKERSSSS!!!!!!!

[thecrystalbladesystem]

Sansa Stark in King’s Landing

“Lady Catelyn had said that Sansa was a gentle soul who loved lemon cakes, silken gowns, and songs of chivalry…” ~ Brienne 🍋

[thecrystalbladesystem]

solar eclipse // 04.08.2024 ✨

[thecrystalbladesystem]

ab. 1882 Home dress with "Cul de Paris" bustle by Charles Frederick Worth

silk, warp velvet with bouclé velvet in a floral pattern, honey-colored silk satin; feed; Silk in damask technique, cotton gauze; Finishing: silk satin ribbons, cotton machine lace

(Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin)

[thecrystalbladesystem]

“Reason and the divine spirit do not speak audibly or strikingly enough from a human being — stones, trees, animals must speak in order to make the human being feel himself and make himself reflect.”

— Novalis, Logological Fragments II

[thecrystalbladesystem]

Behind us is Devil's Chimney. @travelgraphics

[thecrystalbladesystem]

something. about. the horror of being sent on an impossible (death) quest and obligations and hospitality politics. the trauma of not having a home, and then the trauma of being in a house that becomes actively hostile to you, one that would swallow you whole and spit out your bones if you step out of line. all of this is conditional, your existence continues to be something men want gone.

it's about going back as far as I can with the perseus narrative because there's always a version of a myth that exists behind the one that survives. the missing pieces are clearly defined, but the oldest recorded version of it isn't there! and there's probably something older before that!! but it's doomed to forever be an unfilled space, clearly defined by an outline of something that was there and continues to be there in it's absence.

and love. it's also about love. even when you had nothing, you had love.

on the opposite side of the spectrum, this is Not About Ovid Or Roman-Renaissance Reception, Depictions And Discourses On The Perseus Narrative.

edit: to add to the above, while it's not about Ovid, because I'm specifically trying to peel things back to the oldest version of this story, Ovid is fine. alterations on the Perseus myth that give more attention Medusa predate Ovid by several centuries. this comic is also not about those, either! there are many versions of this story from the ancient world. there is not one singular True or Better version, they're all saying something.

Perseus, Daniel Ogden

Anthology of Classical Myth: Primary Sources in Translation, edited & translated by Stephen M Trzaskoma, R. Scott Smith, Stephen Brunet

[thecrystalbladesystem]

So, it finally clicked that while the average person does in fact broadly comprehend that people are neither good nor evil - they're good and bad, and have free will - they also can't understand why some people would fully commit themselves to completely awful causes or to being a terrible person throughout their entire lives. They can't really picture how this works, because they can't imagine themselves choosing to die on a hill of Being A Terrible Person.

This void in their comprehension is where the myth of the Ontologically Evil Person is very likely to come and settle in sooner or later, because it seems to finally provide an answer that makes sense of otherwise senseless cruelty and violence. Agonizing questions like "Why would my boyfriend spend so much energy on making me feel like shit and breaking me down?" "Why would this historical figure decided to kill all of these people?" and "Why would this guy go start a cult and murder everyone?" are finally given an answer, and the formerly-bewildered person finally has some peace of mind.

Because of this, the myth of the Ontologically Evil Person is incredibly hard to get out of people's minds once it takes root. For one thing, bad ideas are like bad habits; it doesn't really work to tell people to Just Stop With Them, because without something else to take its place? They're going to fall back on it.

And if somebody's been traumatized from abuse? The last thing they want to hear is that they're basically dehumanizing their abuser and that's not cool, because it feels to them like the other person is taking their abuser's side and telling them to get fucked. Even if this not what's happening, the survivor's brain is currently operating on fight/flight/fawn/freeze mode, and a brain operating fight/flight/freeze/fawn mode is keyed to making snap decisions to try and remove you from the danger as soon as possible, which means categorizing everything into black and white. This person couldn't care less about the history of eugenics right now; literally all they care about is being safe.

"Okay, so if the Ontologically Evil Person doesn't exist, how the hell do you explain those fuckers over there?" some of you are probably asking.

Here's the deal. Literally every human being alive can and will do terrible things if they're sufficiently scared and desperate. They're in no position to appreciate that nearly all asshole behavior can be explained by a lack of critical social and self-management skills, or by a lack of access to self-improvement (including being too traumatized to trust means of self-improvement).

People who are scared, insecure, and under high levels of stress will often cling to anything that makes them feel better, because they want to feel safe and secure and not in psychological and/or physical agony. (Stress does an absolute number on your body, too.)

Being reliant on a shitty behavior, belief system, or product for some measure of feeling secure and safe is how you get people saying things like "If I didn't act mean, everyone would just walk all over me!" or "I was really depressed before I found this, so if I gave it up I'm going to get depressed again, and I might hurt myself." (And there might be some truth to this one! This might indeed happen if they give it up cold turkey, and without finding an alternative!) It's how you get people conducting """scientific""" studies to """prove""" that their bigotry is totally justified and not at all irrational. ("Well of course these people are genetically inferior, they wouldn't be poor and disease-ridden if they weren't... what do you mean, systemic inequality and uneven healthcare access? No that's obviously fake and made up by More Bad People.")

People also act in unhealthy ways to deal with personal insecurities implanted by parents or society. You have people out there whose parents drummed it into their heads that second place was for worthless losers, or that no one would love them if they didn't look or act a certain way. You have people who absorbed the idea that acknowledging the basic humanity of shitty people means that they have to forgive them and personally help them get better and just suffer through the abuse in the meantime.

This is how people choose to die on the hill of Being A Terrible Person. They weren't ontologically evil. They were scared, and they thought they saw a fortress on the top of that hill that would keep them (and perhaps also their loved ones) safe.

[thecrystalbladesystem]

I love the vibes of the spring nymphs/fae once we finally start transitioning into the spring season, they always have such pleasant vibes!

Spring is here, the fae are out 🖤

[thecrystalbladesystem]

[thecrystalbladesystem]

Early 1970s

[thecrystalbladesystem]

I think it's honestly the general tone that Christian/Catholic works have when it comes to Moses mostly due to the fact that there's less emotional significance put on the aspect that he is one of us and more of a focus on the aspect of slavery being bad but that to me honestly feels a bit.. surface level at best?

I'm struggling a little bit to put into words what I mean but it almost feels like his actions aren't as motivated by seeing his people suffer and feel more like a forced moral obligation when it very much isn't, but at the very least the films music is still incredibly good and I'm very grateful they didn't whitewash the fuck out of him like they usually do like in most artworks I've seen😭

Rewatching Prince of Egypt as I write my haggadah for this year and pondering the changes they made to the story.

Arguably the biggest one is that in the Torah, Moses doesn't grow up unaware of his heritage. Miriam sees Pharoah's daughter find him and approaches her, suggesting that surely the princess will be in need of a good midwife. Pharoah's daughter agrees, and so Moses spends most of his early life with his *actual* mother. He is raised in two worlds, as both a Hebrew slave and an Egyptian royal, and it is the unbearable friction of these incompatible worlds that eventually forces him into his act of rebellion and leads to his exile in the desert.

I get why they made this change—it makes for a more relatable, easier-to-understand, and more dramatic narrative, with young adult Moses suddenly discovering his heritage and thus "waking up" to realize the injustice and inequality of his world.

But it also creates a (metaphorical) white savior narrative. In the Torah, Moses rises up *because* he is one of us, and becomes the leader because of his connection to God (and, possibly, because his privilege made his rebellion more likely to succeed—how many leaders of unsuccessful rebellions has our history forgotten?)

Moses in the film narrative, however, is very much one of the privileged elite, who rebels against the system only because he discovers his connection to the oppressed and it triggers a sympathy and empathy he had previously not felt at all.

In the Torah, when Moses says "let my people go," it is because he belongs to us.

In the film, it sounds like he thinks we belong to him.

[thecrystalbladesystem]

A Saint, from the 'Jackdaw of Rheims' by Briton Rivière

[thecrystalbladesystem]

Expected years of schooling in South America

by land_geist

[thecrystalbladesystem]

View of Beilstein with Soldiers by a Tavern by August von Wille