#also the way ppl talk abt colonized cultures' practices....

[peasantexchangeprogram]

*completely serious tumblr user voice* oppression was actually invented by Big West sometime in the 1800s. no one was oppressed anywhere before that.

[equalseleventhirds]

Sorry if this isn't the right question to be asking for the topic of discussion, but, like. How would you approach race in the context of a fantasy setting? Where you can't have characters explicitly SAY that they're Kenyan or Dominican or Japanese or w/e because those things don't exist. Obviously I still want to put characters of color into my work, but I don't know the best way to go about it in those circumstances.

this is a good question!! and ultimately i am not an expert, but i do consume a lot of fantasy media and am a poc, so!

this is actually an issue of coding? i mean, you can obviously just describe like, skin tone and hair texture and so on, give characters names from certain cultures, but that's surface-level. and we want to go deeper than that!

most important i think is in-universe worldbuilding of diverse cultures for these characters to come from! for example, the shadow and bone tv show recently came out, and while there's some Uh Fucking Issues, it (and the book series) does specifically code characters as poc. and like, various poc from different cultures! that whole series like, has several distinct countries that are intentionally analogous to certain countries/cultures in our world; not precisely the same, and with fantasy elements added on, but similar in ways that makes the coding clear. you don't necessarily have to pick like, specific cultures from our world, but it's certainly helpful for you the creator to like, decide what the varying cultures in your world are like, and then work it into the text.

it can be arduous and awkward to do like, a whole map and culture guidebook or w/e, so if you don't want to do that you can work it into conversations: characters talk about where they're from, they note differences in cultural practices or clothes or food or w/e. this helps build your worldbuilding AND your characters (and sometimes their relationships with each other! sharing elements of ur culture with someone else has MEANING). or have one character on their own think about some part of their culture; make a dish their grandmother made, or carefully unpack a significant cultural item in their home, or think about the intricate knot on a piece of cultural clothing. we live with an awareness of our heritage and culture (even if, for some of us, that awareness is like, 'i lost a lot of it' or something). so should your characters.

also important is to like... consider the societal impact of being a poc in your world? if you want to do a clear 1:1 'white people as the oppressor', then set that up. make the white-people country colonizers, warmongers, even if there is now a 'peace' in place. talk about how they treat poc, in their own country or when traveling to others. establish how they have power. establish how poc feel about it! you don't even have to go super into detail, but like, YOU as the creator ought to know, so that when you reference things in the text you know what's being referenced.

if you are NOT doing that obvious analogy (and you don't have to!) you should still probably figure out what your analogy IS. some worlds make everything peaceful and equal, no fantasy racism at all, and that can be lovely escapism! but this has to be deliberate. if white ppl have no extra power or prejudices here, you have to be aware of the racial politics you've internalized from the real world (bcos we all do, white ppl and poc alike), and think very hard abt what a world without that would be like.

if you are establishing a different dynamic where a culture of poc is in charge? be aware and thoughtful abt what you're doing. i'm not gonna say don't do it, bcos i've seen it done well! but i've also seen it done very poorly, even by writers of color.

...and that devolved into a discussion of like, racial politics. but! that's going to be important in your work! not to say that like, racial politics will automatically feature heavily in a fantasy world, bcos sometimes it doesn't! but your personal awareness of what your intention is for poc in this world is going to be important in how you write their experiences.

[trickstarbrave]

big hot topic on tiktok that has been talked abt often that i wanna throw my two cents in abt the discussion but will do so here bc its going to be way easier than condensing it in 60 seconds and ppl will get even more mad abt it on there. under a cut so you can just not look if you don’t want to as it’s probably long and no one likes this discussion 

disclaimer: im not jewish. culturally or religiously at all. so i do not have the best of insight of jewish folklore and i will mainly be repeating what i have heard jewish ppl say on it but you listening to jewish ppl on it will invariably be way more helpful. ultimately i am not talking to make an argument for or against lilith worship bc i can’t make that call, mainly just that arguments for it i see tend to be deeply flawed. ive seen jewish people who say they don’t care if people worship her and ive seen jewish people who are very much against it and frankly no one needs my non jewish ass giving them permission on it, i just don’t like some of the harmful arguments and at times BLATANT anti-Semitism i see in the discussions

“lilith isn’t a closed practice!!! she cant be closed!!! she’s a being/deity we can all recognize!!!”

this i feel starts with a misunderstanding of what “closed practice” means. a closed practice is a very broad term to describe any practices, typically spiritually in nature that are not freely shared 100% openly, usually due to trying to preserve cultural or religious practices. you can learn about most of them--if you go to a primary source. many people of closed practices are open about talking about it and teaching it to people who are interested, and some cannot due to years of oppression and theft of those said practices. some require initiation, and a lot of them are passed down with heavy cultural ties. and most importantly “closed practice” is a relatively new understanding of cultural preservation after colonization. 

judaism isn’t a ‘fully closed’ religion, but it does have a set conversion order in place, and typically while converting you will learn under a rabbi or teacher. a lot of jewish mysticism, magic, and folklore are passed down culturally, so even converts may take a very long time to learn all the ins and outs of it. and a lot of times jewish practices, beliefs, texts, and folklore has been wholesale stolen by western new-age spiritualists, occultists throughout the ages, and demonized by people who seek to harm jewish people as a whole. 

the pure fact of the matter is that unless you are learning from jewish people theres going to be a lot of things about lilith you don’t know. your understanding outside of the cultural jewish understanding of her is very different, yet you are the one who also constantly equates them as the same being with the same stories, with some modifications. yet time and time again whenever a jewish person would express anxiety over it (as she can be viewed as a very HARMFUL spirit to jewish people and not a deity for them) you talk over them and call them sexist, and when they try to correct you over misunderstandings of her stories you tell them you know more than them. 

with closed practices what doesn’t matter is your bloodline or your skin, it is about the information you have access culturally, and that information may be kept from people like you so that the faith in question can be preserved because it has been threatened. and yes, jewish people have had their cultural, spiritual, and religious practices threatened. it isn’t about keeping you out because they don’t like you, its about the fact that you don’t know everything and the way you are going to learn it will be difficult and very different. ive seen white voodou workers who are actual recognized practioners (sorry for the lack of proper terminology on this i know they have proper words/titles but i dont know them), and they didn’t just look up whatever they could find online, they had to seek out a priest to learn from, and it took a lot of time and training. 

there is a way to approach closed religious/spiritual practices, and someone saying ‘this is closed’ is not them saying ‘go away you cant even look at or be interested in this thing it is not for and never will be for people like YOU’. and ultimately HOW you go about approaching it will be decided by someone in that culture, and not however you feel would be the best way to do it as an outsider.

“how could so many people, if they aren’t actually contacting the “real lilith” be wrong? if shes from a closed practice she couldn’t reach out to so many people right? so they aren’t doing anything disrespectful” 

spirits, deities, and other entities from closed practices do reach out to outsiders on occasion and the correct course for dealing with that is to immediately find a person of religious/spiritual authority and trying to work with that person to better understand why. again the point above: you do not have the cultural knowledge to work with them, you do not understand how to identify them, what practices best suit them, the multitudes of stories around them, and history of them working with humans. if you actually value them as an entity it is imperative you understand from a PRIMARY source all of this information, not just second and third hand accounts of outsiders. 

and also a lot of colonizers have claimed to be personally connected or contacted by entities from a closed practice and use that as an excuse to not only not learn, but speak as an authority figure about them. there are people who claim to work with shinto spirits with absolutely 0 actual knowledge on shintoism yet feel like they have an authority to speak on it. there are people who claim to have been contacted by voodou, hoodou, and vodun spirits/entities and know nothing about it yet speak as authority figures on it. i’ve seen someone do it for a polynesian god. they did not care about actual learning, they cared about their own beliefs, validating those said already existing beliefs, and getting validation online. am i saying everyone is doing this with lilith? no. but saying “people wouldnt just lie/be wrong right?” yeah. yeah it happens all the time. 

“they don’t even like her, they fear her, she’s a demon to them and is actually from babylonia, we are NOT worshipping the same version as her and they don’t even want anything to do with her so why does it matter” 

in terms of actual cultural study a lot of jewish and christian stories are born from the cultures their people have had contact with. historically yes, jewish people have been in babylonia, assyria, and that area, and have made cultural exchanges with those people. a lot of cultural sharing has occured throughout history, but the jewish tellings of the stories have particularly jewish cultural knowledge and heritage in them. also we frankly do not have a lot of concrete surviving stories of lili, lilu, and lilitu, so i know you are not basing the meat and bones of your practice on those unless you have access to that cultural knowledge that not even archaeologists and anthropologists even know exists. most of it is on middle ages mysticism that developed her further based on jewish folklore and religious stories. 

also just because a culture doesn’t worship and revere a spirit doesn’t mean it is yours for the adopting and taking. we see this with the cannibalistic spirit i will not name from algonquin tribes and shapeshifting spirits/witches i also will not name from navajo. these are not spirits you’re supposed to mention or talk about, and even more so because their culture has such intense, negative stories around them means you should probably give it a little more thought. 

the last point i am going to make is the general, overt anti-semitism i see. stop comparing judaism to christianity. stop saying they are evil and misrepresent her because judaism is inherently sexist. stop saying they are oppressing your culturally christian raised ass. stop saying jewish people have no culture of their own and its “all stolen from pagan traditions” (which are somehow all equally open for you to take from too i suppose, as though middle eastern practices are exactly the same cultural weight as all white european ones)

again im not for the forceful closing of practices and i cannot give you fucking permission as i sure as shit do not know but i don’t think any of you even understand what “closed practice” means and why jewish people might have even the slightest misgivings about you working with or worshipping her and it really shows. if you have been heavily studying the occult, jewish traditions, and are doing so respectfully then i sure as hell am not here to argue with you about it so don’t come at me for it. what i am saying is a lot of people who do not have that and are absolutely disrespectful towards judaism and jewish people as a whole really keep making an ass of themselves on witchtok and are absolutely insufferable towards any jewish person who voices their thoughts and feelings on it, and i have a problem with that. 

[trickstarbrave]

im reading a book from a native american scholar abt colonization and this is just me talking from my whitey white experience but: 

the entire new age spiritual movement in almost every way shape and form was an appropriation of indigenous peoples struggle. all of it. the entire narrative. it was white ppl jealous that people of color were returning to their roots and cultures their entire lineages tried to stomp out, and those colonized people were in fact FULFILLED by walking away from western beliefs and christianity, so they constructed some big narrative abt how horribly treated THEY were by chrsitianity (even with some cultures and practices which converted to christianity peacefully), all while whole sale stealing whatever spiritual beliefs and practices they wanted from non-white people while bastardizing them and calling it ‘pagan’ and ‘celtic’. which is doubly ironic bc that kind of shit is also what christianity did to many cultures. 

and this is me speaking it from experience bc ive seen a lot of stupid new age shit while i was just trying to figure myself out as a nb gay preteen. and this isnt to say any reconstructionist path or european pre-christian belief system is wrong and appropriative. im straight up talking abt the general new age bs which just stole smudging and chakras and karma and probably almost everything else.