3countriestravellingblogfan-blog

[rafecameronssl4t]

Bold move bestie || Rafe Cameron x fem!reader (love island au)

Summary: The new bombshell turns out to be a familiar face who ends up backstabbing you

Warnings: angst???

Word count: 1,604

A/n: if u get the Nakia reference from s5 of love island AUS i love you!!!!

MASTERLIST (love island au masterlist)

divider by @h-aewo

You squint, lifting your sunglasses, the sun glaring as you get a better look at the new bombshell strolling into the villa. For a moment, you can’t quite place her—until she tosses her hair back and flashes that familiar, confident smile. Recognition flickers in your mind, and you mutter, “Oh my god, I know her.”

Beside you, Sofia shoots you a puzzled glance. “What?” “Yeah, I know her.” You chuckle, still in mild disbelief, as the rest of the girls perk up, curiosity sparking in their eyes. They lean over the railing, vying for a better view, murmuring amongst themselves as they try to gauge the new girl’s energy.

Leah nudges you, her eyebrows raised. “How do you know her?” You watch as she heads straight for Rafe, her face lighting up as he extends his arms, pulling her into a hug that feels just a bit too friendly. A part of you twists at the sight, but you can’t help but laugh at the absurdity.

“She’s my little sister’s best friend,” you say, shaking your head as you try to process it. “I haven’t seen her in ages, and now… here she is. This is crazy.” The girls’ jaws drop in unison, their reactions blending into a mix of disbelief and fascination. “This just got interesting,” Sofia whispers with a smirk, watching you with a mischievous glint in her eye.

After the guys finish their round of introductions with the new girl, the girls gather, eager to get their turn. As you walk past the boys, Rafe reaches out, gently pulling you to his side. His arm wraps around your waist, his touch grounding you amidst the flurry of excitement. Leaning down, he plants a soft kiss on your forehead, lingering just long enough to make you feel the warmth of his affection.

“You good?” he murmurs, his voice low, a reassuring smile playing on his lips as he holds you close. His intense gaze locks onto yours, and for a moment, the world around you seems to quiet. You nod, a smile tugging at your lips as butterflies begin to flutter in your stomach.

“Mhm, I’m good,” you reply, the words barely a whisper, but the way he looks at you makes you feel seen, as if it’s just the two of you here. Rafe’s hand lingers on your waist for a second longer before he finally lets you go, and you join the other girls, feeling a warmth that his gaze has left behind.

“Hey, you!” you squeal, rushing over and pulling Savannah into a tight hug. She squeals back, her arms wrapping around you just as enthusiastically, clearly as relieved as you are to see a familiar face in the villa. “How are you? It’s crazy you’re here!” you laugh, leaning back to get a better look at her, still not quite believing it yourself.

“I know, right?” she laughs, glancing around the villa with wide eyes. “It doesn’t even feel real that I’m actually here.” You smile at her, a warm fondness bubbling up as you take in the younger girl, who you remember being inseparable from your sister.

Later that night, you and Savannah sit side by side at the vanity, makeup wipes and moisturiser scattered around as you both unwind. The villa’s quiet now, save for the faint hum of music from the lounge. Savannah catches your eye in the mirror, a mischievous smile tugging at her lips.

“So… you and Rafe, huh?” she teases, her voice lilting with curiosity as she wiggles her eyebrows. You can’t help but laugh, cheeks warming as you crack a smile. “Yeah,” you admit, feeling a little rush of excitement just thinking about him. “We’re doing really good, like… really good.”

The words leave your lips in a happy giggle, your mind drifting to the way he looks at you, his arm around you earlier, that soft kiss on your forehead. Savannah laughs, nudging you with her shoulder. “I knew something was up when he kept looking over at you during the fire pit. You two are cute.”

~

The next day, news spreads that Savannah’s chosen three guys for her speed dates, and you can’t help but laugh when you hear Rafe’s name among them. It doesn’t surprise you, and honestly, it doesn’t bother you either. Savannah had mentioned after she choosing that she’d only picked guys she hadn’t had much chance to talk to yet—Rafe included.

That night, the fire pit glows in the dim villa light, casting shadows as Savannah stands up to make her choice. You watch with calm curiosity—until her eyes sweep across the boys and her voice rings out clearly, “Rafe.” For a moment, you’re stunned.

You blink, trying to process it, a mix of surprise and disbelief churning in your stomach. “Did she just say Rafe’s name, or am I hearing things?” you murmur to Jacob, who looks just as taken aback. Your gaze snaps to Savannah, and she can’t even meet your eyes, her gaze glued to the ground.

After the re-coupling, Rafe doesn’t waste a second. He’s by your side, pulling you into a hug, his arms wrapped tightly around you as his hand rubs soothing circles on your back. You can feel the tension in his hold, as if he’s silently reassuring you, but it’s not enough to ease the fire simmering in your chest.

“Where is she?” you say, pulling back from his embrace, not even trying to hide the spark of anger in your voice. Rafe hesitates, his eyes flicking toward the kitchen. “Uh—” “Oh, there she is,” you mutter, already spotting Savannah standing by the counter, looking noticeably tense. Before Rafe can stop you, you’re striding across the villa, making a beeline for her. The air thickens as the others watch, heads turning to follow your approach.

“Bold move, bestie,” you say as you near her, the words laced with a hard edge despite the tight smile on your lips. Savannah turns around, visibly caught off guard, her expression a mix of guilt and hesitation as she struggles to find her words. “I… I didn’t mean to—” “Didn’t mean to?” you cut her off, your smile vanishing as your gaze hardens. Arms crossed, you keep your eyes locked on her, unflinching. “So picking my guy was just an accident, then?”

Savannah opens her mouth, but you can tell she’s struggling for an answer, clearly realising this was more complicated than she’d anticipated. The tension between you both crackles, and out of the corner of your eye, you can see Rafe standing back, watching, concern etched into his features as the entire villa waits to see what will happen next.

“You know what pisses me off the most, Sav?” Your voice grows louder, your words slicing through the quiet tension in the villa. “It’s the fact that you knew exactly where I stood with him. You knew, and you didn’t even think to pull me for a chat before making that decision.”

Your heart pounds as you feel the full weight of betrayal settling in, anger coursing through your veins. Savannah meets your gaze, her expression hardening as she crosses her arms defensively. “Look, this isn’t friend island, okay?” she fires back, her tone sharp and unapologetic.

A scoff escapes your lips, quickly morphing into bitter laughter. “Wow. Really, Sav?” You shake your head, the sting of her words cutting deeper than you’d thought possible. “You didn’t stop to consider just how backstabbing this move was?” You pause, searching her face for any hint of remorse, but find none. “There’s a way to go about things if you actually care about people, you know?”

Savannah’s eyes flicker, but her defiance doesn’t waver, and it only fuels the anger simmering inside you. “I’m here to find a connection, same as you. I have a right to explore that.” The words hit hard, and for a moment, you’re speechless, glancing over at Rafe, who’s standing just a few steps away, watching with concern etched into his face.

But even his presence can’t cool the heat of Savannah’s words. You feel a heavy mixture of anger and disappointment, the hurt sinking in deeper as you realise just how far she was willing to go. But you actually think you have a connection with Rafe?” You point back at him, disbelief dripping from your voice as you look at Savannah.

The scoff escapes before you can stop it, your frustration bubbling over as you try to process the idea. The thought that she’d risk your friendship for something so shallow feels like a slap to the face. Savannah’s jaw tightens, but she tries to hold her composure. “Maybe I do,” she says defensively, her voice growing colder. “Or maybe I just wanted the chance to find out without everyone breathing down my neck.”

You shake your head, unable to hide the bitterness. “You knew how I felt about him, Sav. I get that we’re here for love, but… I didn’t think you’d throw our friendship aside to ‘find out’ if there’s something with my guy.” Her gaze falters for a split second before she steels herself, lifting her chin. “I don’t owe anyone an apology for making a choice for myself,” she snaps.

You take a steadying breath, the weight of the tension thick around you as hurt and anger mix into something sharper. “Don’t come running to me when you realise there’s nothing between you and him,” you say, voice cold and unwavering.

Savannah’s lips part, shock flashing across her face as your words land. But you don’t wait for her response. Without another glance, you turn on your heel and walk away, leaving her standing in stunned silence.

[salixsociety]

Yes, I Hate Wicca.

A hopefully comprehensive guide to all my strifes.

More often than I care to admit I find myself quarrelling with people over my seemingly baseless hate for all things popular and simple. I'm accused of being a pretentious traditionalist, of being a snob, even of being a white supremacist on grounds of talking about European culture as a replacement for conventional witchcraft. I will not deny that I am a touch snobby and pretentious - such is my biggest flaw - but I am not a white supremacist, and my loathing for many seemingly innocuous witchcraft practices is not for nothing. It is because I hate Wicca, and everything related to and derived from it, and I have good reason to. Today I would like to introduce you to every single reason I have to loathe Wicca passionately, so that I can hopefully defer future debate partners to this post instead of retyping the same arduous messages.

What is Wicca?

Per the r/Wicca subreddit:

Wicca is a neopagan religion based on ancient pagan beliefs. It's an earth-based religion that believes in a God and Goddess as representative of a greater pantheistic godhead. Wicca includes a system of ethics and teaches that we all are ultimately responsible for our own actions. We believe in gods. We believe in magic. We believe in multiple realities. We practice alone, or in groups. We practice witchcraft.

I chose the r/Wicca subreddit for my first primer because it's easy to accuse people of misrepresenting a faith if you do not allow the community to speak for itself on what their faith constitutes. As much as I hate Wicca, and do not think it is redeemable, I have no desire to be accused of letting my hate set the tone of my arguments against it. I don't want to give militant Wiccans leeway to claim that I speak on their behalf and therefore my points are wrong. The Wicca subreddit is a large community and often referred to by Wiccans, and it features this brief description of 'The Craft'. In any case, though Wicca nowadays is divided and will be described slightly differently by everybody you ask about it, the description provided by the subreddit is a pretty good example of common ground between all Wiccans. That description mostly matches up with how the average Wiccan would describe their faith. My personal description of what Wicca is would look slightly different. I would take care to note, for one, that Wicca is a form of Western Esotericism, more specifically Western Occultism. [1] I also find it important to note that whether or not Wicca is an earth religion, or nature religion, is of some debate, and not all consider it such. What is also subject of some variation across traditions and individuals is whether or not The Craft is pantheistic: some people accept the two gods of Wicca as figureheads for every pagan god in existence, others simply worship them as one single masculine god and one single feminine god. 'Witchcraft' is also a term that has no set definition - I can only assume that the mention of it on r/Wicca intends to broadly refer to most or all forms of magic accepted within Wicca.

Worth noting is that Wicca has spread very far beyond the confines of British Traditional Wicca (BTW), which are streams of Wicca that still adhere strongly to their roots. What is and is not Wicca is something that is of some debate among Wiccans themselves. That's why I think it is highly important to establish a few definitions that we'll be using for the rest of this post:

WICCA: I'll admit to using this term loosely. When I say 'Wicca' in this post I'll mainly be referring to the community of people who consider themselves Wiccans, i.e. the Wiccan religion. I may also use it to describe the broader influence of Wicca, however.

WICCA-DERIVED: I'll mostly use this term when I don't want to paint something as being inherently Wiccan, just related to or derived from it. Wiccan practices often escape the bounds of their respective culture and then grow into staples of various traditions that aren't meant to be Wiccan at all. When referring to such things I'll refer to them as derived from Wicca, or similar.

Wicca's Origins

To understand the history of Wicca we have to travel back a bit further than its founding: to the 16th and 17th century Witch Hunts in Europe. I have another post on this same blog detailing the relationship between Wicca and the Witch Trials, which I highly recommend reading to get a better understanding of the accusations of antisemitism I will be making shortly. At any rate: the witch trials happened across Europe and its colonies throughout the early modern period, after a time of much disaster. As I state in my other article:

Before the early Church turned its hateful eye to the concept of 'witches,' it was firmly on jews. Jews, alongside other heretics and oppressed minorities like the Rroma, were considered utterly worthy of damnation. They were seen as antagonistic to the Church, going against everything the Church stood for, and furthermore as misanthropic, greedy, unreliable enemies. They were the scapegoats for many disasters and indeed frequently accused of practicing magic or poisoncrafting to invoke these disasters on the 'Good Christian Folk'. Furthermore, and this may sound familiar to you, jews were accused of 'consorting with the devil' and murdering children in order to consume their blood to mock the Eucharist, often referred to as blood libel. It was often claimed that this (nonexistent!) practice was done on the Shabbat, alongside other practices twisting and mocking those done in Church on Sunday. The persecution of Jews in Medieval Europe was horrific and seemingly endless, having origins in antiquity and reaching a peak during the Crusades, and another when the Plague ran rampant. Jews were banished, forced to convert to Christianity or brutally murdered, not infrequently by burning or strangulation.

It is fairly easy to see, with some research and critical thought, that it wouldn't logically be real witches being murdered during the witch hunts. For starters, it's hard to believe that there were really people out there flying through the sky on brooms, to mythical locations, to dance naked under the full moon, have sex with the devil, and cannibalize children. There were of course those people who confessed to having done such things, but they were under threat of torture. Indeed, this archetype of the 'witch' has its origins in the Church's loathing for non-Christians and heretics. As Lily Climenhaga states [2]:

"Magic" acted as a description for individuals or groups who did not subscribe to the perceived societal norms of the medieval Christian community. Jews and heretics, the principle Others within Medieval Europe, existed outside of the societal norms and played an important role in the formation of the Christian perception of witches and witchcraft. Common elements existed between stories surrounding Jews, heretics, and witches. These beliefs created the preliminary conditions necessary for the mass persecution and intolerance toward witches and became inherent to the idea of the witch as the diabolical Other within Medieval Christian thought.

Furthermore, the stereotypical image of the witch is directly derived from hateful depictions of the marginalized. The conical, wide brimmed hat that we often see a cartoon witch depicted with actually comes from the conical hat known as a judenhut (jew hat), which was compulsory for many jews to wear in the Middle Ages. [3] Then there is of course the typical red or black hair, short and stocky figure, buckled shoes, large hooked nose, green skin, et cetera. All of this to say: It was not witches being hunted during the witchcraze. There is no such thing as a human person able to fly on broomsticks, cause storms at will, magically steal money from a distance, and curse someone to death with one glance. The medieval and early modern 'witch' is a mythical figure used to justify the persecution and eradication of the already marginalized. This idea is fairly commonly accepted now, as it should be, but it wasn't always.

In 1828, German lawyer and professor Karl Ernst Jarcke proposed the witch-cult hypothesis: a now discredited theory that the people persecuted and murdered during the witch trials were not marginalized innocents, but rather members of a pan-European pagan religion. He posited that this pagan witch-cult was older than Christianity, but had been driven underground by it, and only came to light when the accused of the witch trials confessed to witchcraft. This hypothesis was affirmed and adapted by other scholars throughout the 19th century but remained of moderate popularity at best, until 20th century Egyptologist Margaret Murray became one of its most avid proponents, incorporating it into many of her works. Most notably, she featured it in 1921's The Witch-Cult in Western Europe and 1933's The God of the Witches. [1] Murray's writing is the origin of many Wiccan motifs, such as the thirteen member coven, the Horned God (based on the works of James Frazer) and the cross-quarterly gathering. Furthermore, as a radical skeptic and rationalist, Murray wished to strip the witch-cult hypothesis of all supernatural notions. [4] She claimed that the secret society of witches were not Satanists but nature-worshippers, and that the gatherings were actually orgies, where a priest dressed in ritual skins and horns fornicated with all the gathered women. She also proposed that these rituals were actually benevolent fertility rituals for the good of the witches' communities, and there was little to no malevolent magic involved. She was also the one to introduce the idea that the people who confessed to curses and other malevolent magic were actually witches who had forgotten their own original intent, or had been misinterpreted by the court. [5] Murray herself [5]:

For centuries both before and after the Christian era, the witch was both honoured and loved. Whether man or woman, the witch was consulted by all, for relief in sickness, for counsel in trouble, or for foreknowledge of forthcoming events. They were at home in the courts of Kings [...] their mystical powers gave them the authority for discovering culprits, who then received the appropriate punishment.

These writings were a turning point for the associations of the word 'witch'. Prior to these hypotheses, 'witch' was a bad word, an insult even, reserved only for people - especially women - believed to have evil intentions and use spiritual methods not sanctioned by the Church for their own benefit. The use of the word 'witch' nowadays, as a self-imposed title for anybody using any magical means, can be traced back to this pivotal moment in time. While Murray did great PR for the nonexistent witch archetype, erasing the idea that their practices were Satanic and supernatural, she unfortunately did much harm to marginalized peoples by propagating the idea that it was not them being persecuted, but some mythical clan. Therein lies my first problem: Wicca minimizes the impact of what it calls the 'Burning Times' on marginalized peoples and instead adopts all this suffering for itself, painting the 'witch' as a marginalized, oppressed, and beloathed historical figure, when it's the very people who would've been doing the burning who founded, shaped, and maintain Wicca. In doing so, it also adopts various words, like Sabbat(h), which is a word unique to Judaism and has been weaponized against Judaism since the Middle Ages. Despite much criticism, even from Murray's contemporaries, she was invited to write a highly influential piece for the Encyclopaedia Brittanica in 1929. She used the opportunity to promote her hypothesis as fact, and it quickly grew so influential that according to Jacqueline Simpson, the ideas got to be "so entrenched in popular culture that they will probably never be uprooted." [4] But we haven't even gotten into when Wicca was actually founded, so let's get to that.

One of, if not the only contemporary fan of Margaret Murray's hypothesis, was Folklore Society fellow Gerald Gardner. He was an interesting and well-travelled man, having come from a wealthy family, growing up with nursemaids and a family firm. As a result of his illnesses (namely asthma) and constant travels abroad during childhood, he never received a formal education, nor did he attend school. Instead, through his travels and family acquaintances, he developed quite the interest in spirituality. At first he developed an interest in the Buddhist beliefs of the Singhalese natives on his tea plantation, later in British and Celtic folklore from his relatives the Surgenesons. In his biography, it is revealed that it is from these relatives that he learns that his grandfather, Joseph, was rumored to be a practicing witch. [6] Different accounts of Gardner's life had it that it was also rumored within his family that a Scottish ancestor of his had been burned as a witch in 1610. [7] A few years after this time with the Surgenesons, Gardner was initiated as an Apprentice Freemason in Ceylon. He quickly rose in the ranks, but eventually lost interest in the Masonic activities and resigned in 1911, presumably because he wanted to leave Ceylon. [6] After this he moved around Asia a fair bit more, taking a great interest in Indigenous beliefs there, and even participating in some of their tattoo and ritual traditions. During this time of travel, Gardner also decided to take the Shahada, the Muslim confession of faith and, technically, final step in the process of becoming Muslim; but Gardner never became a practicing Muslim, mostly using the Shahada as a means to gain trust from the locals in Malaya. [7] In 1927, Gardner's father's health deteriorated, and he went back to Britain to visit him. During this time in Britain he researched various spiritual and religious movements, namely Spiritualism and Mediumship, and he reported many spiritual encounters with whom he interpreted as deceased family members. [6] [7] He attended many Spiritualist churches and seances, and had a number of spiritual experiences that, according to his biographer, changed his interest from a purely amateur anthropological one to one of genuine personal belief. [6] He became re-involved with Freemasonry, and started taking a serious interest in magic. When he, after his retirement, officially moved back to Britain, he started pursuing magic there with some seriousness. He became involved in such things as nudism, and, in September 1937, he requested a Doctorate of Philosophy (Ph. D) from the Meta Collegiate Extension of the National Electronic Institute, an organization based in Nevada. This organization was widely known for providing illegitimate degrees and diplomas through mail order, for a fee. After this he began to introduce and style himself as 'Dr. Gardner' despite having no academically recognized qualifications. [7]

He started allowing spirituality to shape his life, such as when he bought land on his beloved Cyprus because he came to believe that he had actually lived on the island before, in a past life. He wrote a book referencing this as well, influenced by his dreams: his first novel, A Goddess Arrives, followed a British man in the 1930s who had, in a past life, been a bronze age Cypriot. [7] When World War II became an imminent threat, Gardner and his wife moved to Highcliffe, just south of the New Forest, to escape potential bombings. [7] He becomes involved with the Rosicrucian Order Crotona Fellowship, a magico-religious tradition in Western Esotericism. The Fellowship had been founded in 1920 by George Alexander Sullivan, based upon a blend of Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, Freemasonry and his own personal innovations. [7] It requires mentioning that Western Esotericism and all of its more modern traditions (Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, Anthroposophy, Freemasonry, Occultism, et cetera) are inseparable from white supremacy. This is something fairly well-recorded, if shrouded, and so complex I am hesitant to delve into it in great amounts of detail. It is, however, pivotal for the reader to understand that many of Western Esotericism's greatest thinkers from the Middle Ages onward were antisemites, racists, misogynists, colonialists, and even nazis. Western Esotericism also had a gigantic impact on 20th century race studies, and the idea that there was such a thing as a superior or aryan race. Defenders and fans of Western Esotericism are quick to point out that there are also many non-white thinkers in Western Esotericism that were pivotal to its formation, and I would never deny that. I am, however, denying that what Western Esotericism has turned into is productive. Having been founded upon the backs of indigenous and marginalized peoples, by appropriating their practices and denying their suffering, such as the appropriation of Kabbalah and the denial of the persecution of jews, shaped by men who were famously evil, such as Aleister Crowley, and used as pseudoscientific justification for some of mankind's greatest atrocities, I cannot stand with Western Esotericism. Ever. It is true that Western Esotericism has been the victim of white supremacy as well: Freemasons being persecuted and incarcerated as part of the 'jewish conspiracy' in Nazi Germany for example, but at the same time the connections between Esotericism and the nazi, half-Nordic, half-Hindu German Faith Movement cannot be denied. Folkish and Odinist 'traditions' find their roots in nazi occultism as well, as they sprang from the desire for a Pan-Germanic ethnic identity. These faiths persist to this day, attracting many different types of people and turning them into white supremacists or even neo-nazis.

Back to Gardner. During his time with the Rosicrucian Order he had also joined the Folklore society, where he published some works and became member of the governing council, where he was a distrusted man. He had also joined the Historical Association. [7] He ran into some quarrels and troubles with the Rosicrucian Order and found himself increasingly cynical of their practices, especially when Sullivan claimed that World War II would not come the very day before Britain declared war on Germany. [6] There was, however, a select group of people within the Order with whom he got along quite well. [7] Biographer Philip Heselton theorized upon who this group could be and claims they may have been Edith Woodford-Grimes, Susie Mason, her brother Ernie Mason, and their sister Rosetta Fudge, all of whom had originally come from Southampton before joining the Order in Highcliffe. Per Gardner himself: "unlike many of the others [in the Order], [they] had to earn their livings, were cheerful and optimistic and had a real interest in the occult". He was "really very fond of them", claiming he "would have gone through hell and high water even then for any of them." [6] It was these very people who took him to the house of a woman Gardner calls 'Old Dorothy' Clutterbuck, a wealthy local to the New Forest area. They, according to him, made him strip naked and take part in an initiation ritual, wherein he caught the words 'Wicca' and 'Wicce', which he recognized as the Old English words for witch. Though research by the likes of Hutton and Heselton shows that the New Forest Coven, as Gardner calls them, were likely only formed in the 1930s, Gardner took this experience as proof of the witch-cult hypotheses which he had learned about from Margaret Murray's writings. [7] Gardner spent a significant amount of time with them but only ever described one of their rituals in detail, one intended to ward off the Germans from coming to Britain. It is attested in both Bracelin's and Heselton's biographies. Gardner went on, after these events, to also become involved with druidry and be ordained as priest in the Ancient British Church, and he conducted some rituals according to the Lesser Key of Solomon with his nudist and occultist friends. [7] In 1947 Gardner was introduced to Aleister Crowley, a man of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the founding father of Thelema, a Western Occultist new religious movement. Crowley is one of those ubiquitous, evil figureheads in Western Esotericism that people prefer not to give too many words to. His history with occultism, racism, antisemitism, misogyny, and sexual abuse is too vast to summarize in one paragraph. Still, Thelema persists to this day, as do Crowley apologists. Crowley elevated Gardner to the IV° of Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.) and issued a charter decreeing that Gardner could admit people into its Minerval degree. The charter was written in Gardner's handwriting and only signed by Crowley. [6] [7] [8] When Crowley passed away, Gardner appointed himself the leader of the O.T.O.. He would, however, lose interest in leading the O.T.O. within a few years. [7] During this time Gardner also travelled through America, especially in hopes of learning about Voodoo and Hoodoo. [7]

Gardner wished to spread his newly founded Wiccan religion, and wrote another work of fiction in order to do so. He described various Wiccan rituals in this book as 'High Magic' and based it heavily on the Solomonic Keys. He was also working on a scrapbook which he did not intend to publish, which he called 'Ye Bok of Ye Art Magical'. Therein he wrote down various Wiccan rituals and ceremonies, and this book would later form as the prototype for the Wiccan Book of Shadows, a term he himself coined. He claimed the book to be of ancient origins to his followers. During this time he also gained his first initiates, and the first covens were formed. [7] During this initial time of true organized religion, Gardner ran into several problems. People important to him left his faith due to his actions with the press, and he had quarrels with some members who recognized that many of his rituals and such had been adapted straight from Thelema. [4] In 1954, Gardner wrote arguably the most influential work on Wicca: Witchcraft Today. It was his first non-fiction work, and contained a preface by Margaret Murray, the woman who had popularized the witch-cult hypothesis on which Wicca was built. In this book, Gardner praised Murray's theories, and added some of his own: namely that the European belief in faeries was actually because of a hidden pygmy race living alongside mankind, and that the Knights Templar were actually initiates into The Craft. [7] After this, Gardner started cultivating larger scale attention for Wicca. He invited the press to write about his religion, and most of the tabloid articles produced painted him and his cult in a negative light. They were made out to be devil worshippers, cultists, et cetera. Nevertheless, Gardner persisted, and encouraged the press to write more. He thought the publicity, even if negative, would help prevent the 'Old Religion', as he called it, from dying out. [7] [8]

In 1960, Gardner's official biography, Gerald Gardner: Witch, was published. It was penned in its entirety by Gardner's friend Idries Shah, a Sufi mystic, but Shah used the name of one of Gardner's High Priests, Jack L. Bracelin, because he was wary of being associated with witchcraft. In 1963, Gardner visited Lebanon. On his way home, he had a heart attack on ship, en route to Tunisia. He was buried there, the funeral only attended by the ship's captain. [9] Many authors have speculated on Gardner's life since his passing. Though he was devoted to his only wife, Donna, it was claimed that Gardner spent many evenings 'cuddling up' to a young High Priestess named Dayonis. Biographer Philip Heselton claims that Gardner had a longterm affair with Edith Woodford-Grimes, nicknamed Dafo by Gardner. This theory was affirmed by Adrian Bott. [10] Gardner was one of, or possibly the first person to use what Wiccans know as a 'Craft name', a magical name used for magico-religious purposes in Wicca. Gardner was known as Scire by his followers. Reportedly, Wicca was not known as Wicca at the time of its initial development. Gardner often referred to his adherents as 'the Wica', but the religion was only ever referred to as 'Witchcraft', capital W.

In Wicca's founding lies my second problem with it. Wicca was founded by a white man, based on a combination of Western Esoteric notions and experiences, Spiritualism, Mediumship, appropriation of indigenous European, Asian and even American spirituality. It was built on a hypothesis that denies the suffering of marginalized peoples and claims it for nonmarginalized, white, privileged Europeans instead. It poses itself as something with roots in academics, while the founder had never enjoyed any form of education and possessed a fake PhD. It was influenced heavily by cults, occultists who are generally acknowledged to be terrible people, and pseudoscience. It claims to be ancient, but was founded in the 1900s. And, importantly, it contributes heavily to white supremacy through the idea of a pan-European cultural identity and pan-European pagan religion.

Wicca Today: Innocuous Propagation of White Supremacy

Wicca has grown exponentially since its founding, now being by far the largest pagan religion actively being practiced in the modern era. It has both organized covens and solitary adherents across the world, and most people who have access to the internet will have heard of Wicca once or twice. Wicca is, truly and undeniably, inescapable in pagan and magical spaces. It's easy, and common, for adherents to claim that Wicca is not what it once was. 'Yeah, the origins are bad, but that doesn't make the whole Craft bad,' is a favored argument against the idea that Wicca's origins make it inherently irredeemable. I disagree strongly with this, and always will; something that was built with bricks made of appropriation and lies can't be separated from those evils. If you took the appropriation out of Wicca, it would cease to be Wicca. Deconstructing Wicca would leave you with a blend of Freemasonry, Thelema, folk magic, Christianity, various Indigenous beliefs, Kabbalah, Occultism, and some misrepresented paganism. If you take the appropriation and harm out of Wicca, it simply ceases to exist. Nevertheless, many people think Wicca can be separated from its evil origins. That's why in this section of the article, I'd like to delve into why that is not true, and how Wicca continues to do harm in this day and age.

For starters, of course, Wicca has not ceased to be appropriative simply because time has passed. Rather, the appropriation gets increasingly less attention, until it becomes so integral to the Craft that people don't even notice or stop to think that it may have come from somewhere that never wanted it to be taken in the first place. A prime example, which I've already touched on very briefly, is the use of the word 'sabbat', in reference to 'Wiccan' holidays. As I wrote in my other post about this topic:

The very root of this word is the Hebrew ש־ב־ת (sh-b-t). It is the root word for many words pertaining to rest and not working (or more broadly: 'cessation'). This word evolved into שַׁבָּת (shabát), which translates to Saturday or weekly rest-day, normally. This word, also often spelled Shabbos from Ashkenazi Hebrew, travelled through various antique languages (Ancient Greek -> Latin -> Old French) directly to Middle English, where it became 'Sabat', and later Sabbath. While this word, in its travel through Europe, has influenced some words, you'll notice that it has also stayed one unique word, with a unique meaning: the Jewish Rest Day. The Sabbath, Shabbos, Sabbat, Shabat, et cetera, will always and has for most of its history been the word uniquely reserved for Saturday in Judaism. To those not very well read on Judaism, it may be helpful to know that Judaism is what is considered a closed practice. It is only permissible to practice Jewish religious tradition, and to a large extent, Jewish culture, if you are a Jewish convert. By extension, that should clue you in on the nature of the word and holiday of Shabbat.

This word, which should have stayed what it was meant to be, a word for the Jewish rest day, first became associated with the archetypal witch during the late Medieval period, when jews, and later witches, were accused of going to Sabbaths or Synagogues to perform evil rituals. Though there were attempts by the likes of Margaret Murray to claim that the word 'sabbat(h)' as used by 'witches' was not in any way related to Judaism, those claims have been strongly disputed. Murray claimed in her 1921 book The Witch-Cult in Western Europe that 'sabbat' actually came from Old French s'esbattre, meaning to frolic and amuse oneself. This theory has no proof, nor is it readily academically received or accepted. The word in conjunction with witchcraft is deeply hurtful to Judaism and jewish people across the globe, as it reminds them of the persecution they faced when their faith and culture was considered evil and worth being killed over. I highly recommend reading Why I Don't Call Them Sabbats, Why You Should Stop, and Other Thoughts on Problematic Aspects of Western Witchcraft by Nile Sorena for more thoughts on this topic, as well as Jews and the Witchcraze by Jewitches.

The Wheel of the Year, the cycle of yearly Wiccan holidays (the very ones referred to as 'sabbats', which I refuse to do and will not start doing), is just as appropriative as the use of the word sabbat, but, hilariously, it is also quite magically and religiously dysfunctional. The Wheel of the Year is a Wiccan invention, initially based on the works of James Frazer, Robert Graves and Margaret Murray, the latter of whom was a big proponent of the theory that 'witches' gathered on cross-quarterly days, something that is still a big motif in Wicca. These theories were adopted by neopaganism by Gardner's Bricket Wood Coven and the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, a neo-Druidic group founded by Ross Nichols. Supposedly, these people harmonized the eight primarily holidays described by the former academics to create an easy-to-use calendar for neopagans in Britain. [11] In the 1970s, prolific Wiccan Aidan Kelly gave names to some of the previously unnamed Wiccan equinoxes (Mabon and Ostara) and the Wiccan summer solstice (Litha). [12] This leaves us with the contemporary wheel of the year, which looks like this:

There are many reasons I find the Wheel of the Year appropriative and dysfunctional. For starters, Wiccan lore claims that the spokes-on-a-wheel structure is borrowed from Celtic mythology, but there is no evidence that Celtic myth ever depicted the passing of time as a wheel. Nevertheless, there is no inherent problem with viewing the passing of time as a wheel; cycles are very important in paganism across Europe. More cumbersome than the supposedly ancient wheel structure, is the combination of pagan holidays from various only passively related cultures. Beltane (Bealtaine), Lughnasadh, Samhain, and Imbolc are Celtic; specifically Gaelic. They all work well in conjunction, and were historically celebrated by the same people(s) throughout their years. Yule is Germanic, being celebrated by the Norse, continental Germanic, and Anglo-Saxon peoples. It was not in any way historically related to the four primary Celtic festivals, and doesn't work in conjunction with them very well, as many things that made Yule significant to the Germanic peoples, were celebrated during Samhain by the Gaels. Mabon is a contrived festival, filling an autumnal gap. The Germanic peoples did not have a specialized holiday for the autumn equinox, nor did the Celts, so Wiccans filled this gap with a 'lesser Sabbat' in the 1960s, named 'Mabon' by Aidan Kelly in the 1970s. [12] It was named for Mabon ap Modron, a figure in Brythonic mythology. As Wicca is wont to do, it paints itself and its traditions as incredibly ancient and cultural, and Mabon is no exception to this rule. Wiccans generally paint Mabon as a 'Celtic harvest festival' filled with rich traditions of sacrifice and preparation for winter, but factually, nothing is less true. Mabon (ap Modron) as a deity has nothing whatsoever to do with the autumn equinox, and there is no solid record of consistent autumn equinox festivities as celebrated by the Celts (nor by the Germanic peoples, for that matter). Noteworthy also is that on top of this usage of the name of Mabon for an unrelated festival often being deemed appropriation by Welsh and other Gaelic people, additional offense is often taken to the likening of the 'Mabon' celebrations to Thanksgiving, as many leftist people involved in Celtic culture have no respect for, nor wish to be associated with, colonialism. Ostara is an almost equally contrived festival, based on a single attestation by a Christian in England, Bede, who claimed in his work The Reckoning of Time that there was an Anglo-Saxon goddess named Ēostre, to whom a spring feasts were dedicated during the month of Ēosturmōnaþ (modern April). Litha, too, finds its origins in Bede's The Reckoning of Time. Per Aidan Kelly himself:

Summer was also rather easy. The Saxon calendar described by Bede was lunisolar. It usually had twelve months, but in the third, fifth, and last month of an 8-year cycle, a 13th month was added to keep it (more or less) in sync with the solar years. The last and first months in the calendar were named Foreyule and Afteryule, respectively, and obviously framed the holiday of Yule. The sixth and seventh month were named Forelitha and Afterlitha; furthermore, when the thirteenth month was added, it went in between them, and the year was then called a Threelitha. Obviously, by analogy with Yule, the summer solstice must have been called Litha. (I later discovered that Tolkien had figured this out also.)

Now, there is nothing wrong with being inspired by various open, European cultures and using that inspiration to create something new. Traditions don't have to be centuries old to be valid. What makes this thing that Wicca does appropriation, is that it refuses to acknowledge its traditions as modern, and its inspirations as cultural. This started way back in its origins, when Murray popularized the witch-cult hypothesis and Gardner espoused it, and it survives into the modern day with Wiccans either refusing to admit or pointedly ignoring the fact that their traditions are modern and were established in the modern period.

Wicca also breeds tolerance for cultural (mis)appropriation. When one is not taught to feel any animosity toward appropriation like the use of the word 'sabbat(h)' outside of its original context, even when the usage of the word is of active detriment to the people to whom the word originally belonged, one will feel confident doing other, similar appropriation elsewhere as well. This is why you'll often notice that it is Wiccans, and people who practice Wiccan-derived practices, who end up appropriating such things as white sage, dreamcatchers, sound bowls, reiki, et cetera. Some of those things should never be used by people who are not native to the culture those things come from, such as white sage, which is not only strictly closed but also a severely endangered plant; others are open to foreigners, but should be treated with respect and acknowledged as belonging to a certain culture. Wiccans who readily appropriate such things are often unable or unwilling to provide substantial information on where those practices or items come from and why they should be within their rights to have them, except through arguments which minimize the cultural value of something. A great example of this is this famed argument: "white sage can't be closed, it's a plant. Plants belong to the earth, and the earth belongs to everyone. I should be allowed to use white sage." Ignoring the fact that white sage is endangered and white sage in stores is generally poached, which entirely negates the 'respecting the earth' aspect of that argument, this argument also diminishes the cultural importance of white sage to Native Americans.

A different reason that appropriation runs rampant in Wiccan communities is, actually, white supremacy. The goal of white supremacy is to homogenize the white race into a single white cultural and ethnic identity, so that all white people may band together and rule over the inferior races, as it were. People think that white supremacy has to be quite drastic, only recognizing it in such things as fascism and neo-nazism, but in actuality, white supremacy is propagated in many far more innocuous ways. The wish to eradicate minority languages, various conspiracy theories about aliens, many commonly accepted forms of pseudoscience, and many forms of cultural appropriation that are popular to this day are huge cultivators of white supremacy. Something does not need to explicitly state, or even have the intent or desire to create a homogenous white ethnic identity to further white supremacy. This topic is so vast and complex it is impossible to summarize in any effective way in this post, which is why I encourage all magical practitioners and pagans to see witchcraft as highly intersectional an do their research about white supremacy and other harmful ideologies that survive in western spirituality to this day. Folkism and Odinism are great examples of not explicitly, but undeniably white supremacist spiritual organizations that further white supremacy by attempting to create a universal Germanic (and then European) cultural and ethnic identity. Wicca also engages a lot with the idea of various pan-European identities. This is particularly visible in two ways: one, the idea that there is a pan-European witch-cult that has survived from prehistory into the modern age. Magic, throughout Europe, as well as paganism throughout Europe, is highly variable and culturally dependent. Though it follows many of the same themes, as it does mostly have its roots in Proto-Indo-European common origins, it is distinctly different. If Europe had one, shared, culture, our world would look very different. Indeed, Europe is just as culturally diverse as any other place, even if nowadays (thanks to white supremacy) that is harder to see. There is not and never has been one singular secret society of witches in Europe. Instead, folk magic, which is culturally and linguistically dependent, and extremely variable across Europe, has survived under the radar of the church into the modern era, and it is one of Europe's most beautiful assets when it comes to illustrating our cultural richness. The second way that Wicca propagates pan-European identities is through their dual divinity system. Wicca's divinities, the Great Horned God and the Triple Goddess, who both are also, in turn, appropriated from Gaulish and Celtic lore respectively, are often said to be a sort of figurehead for all pagan divinities and serve as a sort of shorthand way to worship them all, in a soft pantheist way. The Horned God or Lord, the divine masculine, represents all male pagan gods, and his counterpart represents all female pagan gods as the Divine Feminine. Now, pantheism is not inherently problematic, but when one tries to reduce every pagan divinity in existence, gods which all have wildly different cultural and historic backgrounds, to two deities, without even being so courteous as to make those deities liminal and featureless, I fear that does turn into a problem. No, it is not possible to worship every single pagan god in existence by paying respects to just two deities who are mostly modern inventions. Every deity and every religion, every culture, has distinct needs, requirements, and ways of paying respect, and attempting to reduce all of that to the idea that two gods can serve as a prism and replacement for all the gods which have ever existed is a major flaw to this religion as well as a serious indicator of a strong tie to white supremacy.

But there is another problem to the dual divinity system of Wicca, which is gender essentialism. On top of cultural variability being completely forsaken by this prism-pantheistic idea, it also completely fails to acknowledge that there are many deities across Europe and across the globe which do not conform to the gender binary. The abrahamic God Himself is a great example, but so is Loki, a deity who is oddly well-beloved by Wiccans despite the religion's bioessentialist nature. So are Hermaphroditus from Hellenic myth, various South American divinities, even deities in Tagalog lore. As a matter of fact, gender-neutral depictions of divinity have been found on Celtic gold. [13] Divinity itself, as a concept, has no gender. Rejecting the gender binary has also been crucial to magic and witchcraft across Europe, see for example crossdressing being a prerequisite to successful Seidhr practices, and the associations of men practicing seidhr with unmanliness and even homosexuality. [14] Rejecting the gender binary was a powerful act when it came to magical skill, as it furthered ones journey into the liminal and undefined, the strange and 'other', which is where all manner of magical creatures resided. In fact, the residents of the Otherworld, the Faeries themselves, are not too keen on gender binary. The Divine Male archetype of aggressor, protector, avenger and ruler is one that, in Faery Courts, is generally represented by the Queen, not the King. If there even is a King. I find this ironic, considering Wicca's desire to be closely associated with Celtic mythology and antiquity. The concept of Divine Femininity and Divine Masculinity is also directly contradictory to feminism. To attempt to reduce a woman to nothing but the soft, sensual, sagely, nurturing caretaker is undeniably misogynistic. The idea of a Divine Masculine, too, is antifeminist, though only in the sense that it is entirely patriarchal. Men are leaders, providers, and warriors, according to the gender essentialist archetypes that the Divine Feminine and Masculine reference. This is harmful to men, as well, because it places them in the position of needing to be manly and invulnerable at all times, much to the complaint of both men and women in the modern age. It is simply unproductive and anti-feminist, in a way that is hard to ignore. The bioessentialism of Wicca goes beyond just the Divine Masculine and Divine Feminine archetypes of their deities, however. There is a strong emphasis within Wicca on depictions of genitalia, and many Wiccan authors and figureheads draw comparisons between really any long object and a phallus, believing that everything in magic has to eventually circle back to fertility. Wands are phallic, athames are phallic. The average Wiccan supply store will have penis shaped candles, penis carvings of various crystals. Wicca propagates bioessentialism the likes of which are not seen in any other form of paganism, not even historic paganism. This attitude towards the nonconforming and emphasis on the gender and sex binary make many people feel excluded from Wicca. Trans people, nonbinary people, really any queer or gay person, of any sort, can experience Wicca as a hostile environment. Wiccans may argue that it isn't transphobic by saying that they are including both sexes and never intentionally exclude trans, gay and nonconforming individuals, but what they fail to realize is that the binary, any binary, is outdated. There are more than two gender identities, and there are more than two sexes. Intersex people can never feel included when the religion so heavily affirms that there is, or should be, only penis and vulva.

Furthermore, Gardner himself was a flagrant homophobe, and well-known for it. Lois Bourne, a High Priestess of the Bricket Wood Coven, Gardner's own coven, wrote this about him: [15]

Gerald was homophobic. He had a deep hatred and detestation of homosexuality, which he regarded as a disgusting perversion and a flagrant transgression of natural law ... "There are no homosexual witches, and it is not possible to be a homosexual and a witch" Gerald almost shouted. No one argued with him.

Wicca Tomorrow: Cultural Erasure and Loss

Admittedly, none of what I've said so far has truly captured my biggest, and primary, reason for hating Wicca as much as I do. Other than the fact that I myself am indigenous, and have felt the effects of white supremacy, cultural erasure, and homogenization of white peoples all my life, other than the fact that I am queer and in a gay relationship, other than the fact that I have family who were victims of the holocaust, other than the fact that I am, at my core, an intersectional, radical leftist - the thing I hate the most about Wicca is its potential. Not potential for greatness, mind. I hate Wicca's potential for destruction. I already get to witness it in action every day, and it strikes fear into my heart like nothing else.

I, personally, have always believed that the first antidote to white supremacy, in an ironic but poetic spin, is love for one's own culture. White supremacy, in an attempt to make the white man feel at home in his whiteness and like he has one thing (superiority) in common with all other white men, strips him from his local culture. He is forced to view himself as part of something great, something that spans all of Europe, or all of Germania, or what have you, and he is made to turn a blind eye to what he already has. Local culture. His language, more specifically even, his dialect. His mother's lilt, and his father's flowery cadence. His neighbors. Their celebrations, their cooking traditions. His city. Its architecture, its communal sites, its judicial system. His land. Its medicines, its foods, its magics. The animals upon it. His companions, his livestock, rarely even his foes. Everything a person truly needs is within walking distance when in nature. Every ecosystem is equipped with everything we could possibly need, from a varied diet, to our medicines, to our shelters, to our hygiene products, all the way to the very things that keep us in check. That is not coincidence: we were grown, woven fiber by fiber by that land, that soil, over thousands, millions, billions of years. We do not need the whole world, there is no reason to try to conquer it. But we want to colonize, and so we must make larger and larger teams, clans, armies, races. The man from Truthan must become Cornish, then Celtic, then English, then British, then European, then white, then better. He would have been better off, happier, had he stayed Cornish.

In the worldwide community of people who take an amateur and personal interest in magic and paganism, Wicca is white supremacy's most effective tool in stripping people of their local culture. Wicca did not become this by design; shoddy and evil though its origins may be, I do not think Wicca was created with the intention of homogenizing and radicalizing the white race. However, in the 1950s, when all cultural magic in Europe were flying low under the radar of the church, hiding in families, in villages, in cookbooks and journals, in visits to the local keening woman to cure the evil eye the neighbor gave your cow, Wicca was the first community, first organized religion, to wave a flag and loudly and proudly proclaim to be pagan, to be witches. To do magic. It was the first to associate itself with those labels and voluntarily take them on, to be known by them. Through this singular association with those terms, it became the first thing people thought of when they thought about magic. Because the magic of the common people, the folk magic, is never termed magic by the ones doing it. "This rowan stick in my windowsill against lightning? Magic? You mean that stuff those witches in London do?" Nowadays, as the first form of magic and paganism to go mainstream in Europe since Christianity's taking over, Wicca is ubiquitous when the amateur goes to research magic and paganism. When the internet came along, this became a bigger problem than it may already have been before the digital age. Now, when people are introduced to the concept of modern magic and paganism, when they go to research it, they will only find Wicca. Not for utter lack of sources on (other) cultural magic, on the contrary: there are plenty, but one needs to use specific key words to find them. More scientific, more academic, more secular. When one wants to research cultural and specific magic, one must assume the author does not believe himself, nor does he believe you do. Wicca, however, has resources that do assume the researcher is interested in practicing, which is yet another reason that people go to Wicca rather than something else. They won't find the folk magic, and if they do, it won't be as comprehensive, accessible, entertaining, and personable as Wicca. Wicca will always win, because it was never challenged in the first place. This has led to a huge disparity in the amount of people who know about and/or practice Wicca, and the amount of people who know about and/or practice folk magic and/or cultural paganism. And as Wicca gains more and more popularity, both because it was always set up for success by chance, and because it subtly purveys white supremacy in a way that most people do not even recognize, it will continue to smother cultural, traditional, and folk magic.

Wicca's Reach: Contemporary Magic

Many people who would not consider themselves, or do not identify as Wiccan, still get called that by me in an intentionally derivative way. Not usually to their faces, but when I am discussing reasons why I do not like Wicca, I find it hard to draw a substantial, or even relevant, line between people who identify as Wiccans, and people who do not identify as such but still, functionally, are. Due to Wicca's chokehold on the first several pages of Google when you look up most things pertaining to magic, most practitioners of magic are essentially Wiccan without the label. They do not associate with Wicca intentionally, but they have no idea how to access, or any awareness of the existence of folk magic resources, and so end up practicing the magic Wicca teaches. In witching communities, well-known Wiccan authors are considered staples to read, such as Scott Cunningham. Authors that do not call themselves Wiccan (anymore) but do promote the magic are just as popular, such as Arin Murphy-Hiscock and Nathan M. Hall. These authors all have the same fatal flaw, which makes them Wiccans and automatically unreliable in my eyes: they promote the very idea which Wicca all but created, that there is one, single, universal way to do magic. That you, a Hawai'i Native living on the Islands, will do the best magic you've ever done with this set of European herbs that do not grow on your own soil. With this set of half-baked, appropriative Laws and methods, contrived out of a mishmash of appropriated indigenous practices and European traditions; like the Threefold Law, which is nothing but a cheap and terrible misinterpretation of the Dharmic concept of Karma. Except Wicca doesn't call them that. It calls the herbs staples, essentials. It calls the half-baked rules Ardanes and Magical Theory. Nothing is more ironic to me than a supposed nature religion telling people to forsake the nature around them in favor of the 'universal subsitute' Rosemary (salvia rosmarinus), a plant they've never even seen in real life save for in the jar in their spice cabinet.

Nowadays, thanks to the omnipresence of Wicca, there is a whole new magical tradition, yet unnamed. It consists of all those secular practitioners of magic who do all of their research via resources actually pandering to practitioners, all those people who claim 'we are the daughters of the witches you couldn't burn', all those people who have never heard of or hardly ever think about magic that isn't 'witchcraft'. I like to refer to it as 'contemporary magic', or sometimes 'modern magic', in a context where the label contemporary could be cause for confusion. This 'modern magic' is that more-or-less universal, monotone, Wiccan derived, secular magic that most people would term 'witchcraft'. The magic you see on TikTok. The spell jar magic. The cord-cutting magic. The lemon hex magic. The 'spiritual but not religious' magic. The sound bowl and smoke cleanse magic. The light and love magic. The 'white' magic. Magick. This magic is not culture-less, not at all. It is its own culture, as it were, and not only that, most of the spells, rituals and rules it has have their origins in European culture. But this magic is, in a way, anti-culture. Colonial. It smothers and endangers local magic, more relevant magic, and spreads like wildfire because it is so easy to never have to research beyond Wicca. What makes this modern magic inherently harmful is that it, too, is appropriative. The resources that provide you with this magic, which like the religion that sprouted it, is a huge, sometimes dysfunctional and clashing mosaic of culture, do not actually inform you of the origins of any of the practices that they teach you. They teach you what to do, how to do it, what materials to use, et cetera, but they don't teach you where these rituals came from, why these plants had those associations, what culture sprang this curse. And contrary to popular belief, those things are crucial to magic. The cultures at hand deserve to be honored for what they've given, and every culture has the right to be preserved. Culture is important elsewhere, but it is fundamental to magic. Magic cannot exist without culture. Gods are nothing but a lens to view the world through, magic is nothing but a response to struggle in a language that every human shares: the language of wonder and learning. Magic, at its core, is nothing but humanity's ability to feel amazed, and learn from the elegant language the earth speaks to us. And it is propagated by our ability to speak, to share, to teach to one another. Mother to daughter, brother to sister, chieftain to peasant, wife to warrior. Carry this, eat that. Don't do this, don't go there. Wicca does not acknowledge this importance of culture, nor does it make any efforts to teach the practitioners of it and its derivatives what cultures it was built on and off of. That is the crux and definition of cultural appropriation.

Wicca will continue to spread. I think one of my toxic traits is that I resigned myself to this idea a long time ago, much like how many people resign themselves to the idea of white supremacy or climate change. I can't help but see Wicca and the damage it does as irreversible. Wicca occupies the first pages of any google search about magic, the first thought anyone has when you self-identify as a pagan or practitioner of magic. 'Witch' as a word is completely different than it once was, as is the word sabbat. It feels inescapable, and this weighs heavily on me as somebody whose culture, too, is growing lost in part due to the priority of Wicca over cultural magic. I started writing this post in hopes of getting out all my grievances with this tradition. Ten thousand words and a great many sources later, the wound Wicca carved into me when I realized people would choose it over the valuable cultural knowledge I have and want to preserve no longer throbs, it just aches emptily. If this post manages to change one person's mind on Wicca, it has done its job, and I can die happily. If this post motivates one person to look beyond Wicca and glance at the rich and wild world of cultural magic, especially their own culture, I'll spend eternity in the afterlife gloating.

If there was one thing I wanted the reader to take away from this post, it is not that they should hate Wicca and actively fight to eradicate it. It is that culture is beautiful. All cultures are beautiful. There is no such thing as 'white culture' and we should strive to dismantle that, but the way to do that is to acknowledge the real culture. British culture, English culture, Cornish culture. Low Saxon culture. Silesian culture. Yakutian culture. Tibetan culture. Qazaq culture. Yup'ik culture. Irish culture. Amazigh culture. Cree culture. Sámi culture. Maori culture. Aymaran culture. Muscogee culture. Zulu culture. Find what is rightfully yours, because no matter who or where you are, there is culture in your ancestry, and there is culture in your neighborhood. You are entitled to it like you are entitled to air and water. Learn about the plants that are native to your area. Learn about the medicines your peoples used when conventional medicine was not available to them. Learn about their faith before Christianity, learn about the way they thought the universe came to be and what made humans human. Eat cultural foods, both yours and not. Talk to your elders, and really listen to what they say. Try to remember the weird superstitions and turns of phrase you grew up with. I promise it's there, and I promise it's beautiful. I promise it will make you feel at home.

In the following weeks I will try my best to dedicate some posts to the beginnings of folk magic. How to get involved, where to look for resources, what makes a good resource, what keywords to use when searching, what to do when it feels like there's nothing out there for you, how to find which culture you are a part of. Until then, I will leave you with my sincerest gratitude for reading this ridiculously long complaint.

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Doyle White, Ethan (2016). Wicca: History, Belief, and Community in Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press. 

Climenhaga, L. (2012). Imagining the Witch: A Comparison between Fifteenth-Century Witches within Medieval Christian Thought and the Persecution of Jews and Heretics in the Middle Ages. Constellations, 3(2). 

“The Dehumanization and Demonization of the Medieval Jews.” Medieval Antisemitism?, by François Soyer, Arc Humanities Press, Leeds, 2019, pp. 45–66.

Simpson, Jacqueline (1994). Margaret Murray: Who Believed Her, and Why? Folklore, 105:1-2: 89-96.

Murray, Margaret Alice (1933). The God of the Witches. S. Low, Marston & Company, Limited.

Bracelin, Jack (1960). Gerald Gardner: Witch. Octagon.

Heselton, Philip (2012a). Witchfather: A Life of Gerald Gardner. Loughborough, Leicestershire: Thoth.

Valiente, Doreen (2007) [1989]. The Rebirth of Witchcraft. London: Robert Hale.

"Britain's chief witch dies at sea". News of the World. 23 February 1964. Archived from the original on 8 September 2018.

Heselton, Philip (2003). Gerald Gardner and the Cauldron of Inspiration: An Investigation Into the Sources of Gardnerian Witchcraft. Capall Bann.

Lamond, Frederic (2004), Fifty Years of Wicca, Sutton Mallet, England: Green Magic, pp. 16–17.

Kelly, Aidan. About Naming Ostara, Litha, and Mabon. Including Paganism. Patheos.

Ambiguous Deities on Celtic Gold, Numismatic News. February 27, 2023.

Price, Neil (2002). The Viking Way: Religion and War in Late Iron Age Scandinavia. Uppsala: Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University.

Bourne, Lois (2006). Dancing with Witches. London: Robert Hale. p. 38.

[rainforestakiie]

i am a bit stunned by the amount of misinformation going around? and people are now accusing Eve of replacing Lilith in the later transcriptions… ?

let me try to share some of my knowledge? English is not my first language so this might not come across well?

the first ‘bible’ to speak of Adam was the Tanakh. specifically, he appears in the Book of Genesis, which is part of the Torah, the first section of the Tanakh. Genesis describes Adam as the first human, created by God. the story of Adam in Genesis is believed to be dated back to ancient Israelite oral traditions, around the 6th to 5th century BCE during or after the Babylonian Exile. this makes the Tanakh the first surviving document to tell the story of Adam and introduce him as the first human.

the Tanakh is made up of sacred Jewish texts written primarily in Hebrew, and it forms the canonical scriptures of Judaism. the easiest way explain the Tanakh is to think of it as being similar to what Christians refer to as the Old Testament…

Eve is the only named wife of Adam in the Tanakh. She is introduced in the Book of Genesis as Adam's companion, created by God from one of Adam's ribs (Genesis 2:18-25).

Eve is described as the "mother of all living" (Genesis 3:20) and is central to the story of the Garden of Eden and the "Fall" narrative.

Lilith is not mentioned in the Tanakh. her story comes later in the Alphabet of Ben Sira, written sometime between the 8th and 10th centuries CE. the Talmud and earlier Jewish texts mention Lilith as a demon or night spirit, but she has no connection to Adam and isn’t considered to be human at all.

the idea of Lilith as Adam's first wife became prominent in medieval Jewish mysticism and later folklore, but she doesn’t appear in the canonical Tanakh texts themselves.

the Tanakh is ancient scripture, the Alphabet of Ben Sira is a later work that reflects medieval folklore and ideas that expanded on and reinterpreted some biblical themes and figures. Lilith being Adam’s first wife is not considered biblical accurate and can be considered insulting suggesting otherwise ??? (from past experience!!! )

…sooooo Lilith actually replaced Eve and not the other way around.

[prettyoddfever]

I just wanted to say, I love your blog. You post so much information that’s not only interesting, but also validating, as someone who sees 24/7 misinterpretations of the band’s history on TikTok (I have an account where I post edits there). I first became active in the Panic fandom literally as the band was splitting up, which was just /amazing/ lol, but I took a huge step back from fandoms/online communities related to my interests when I started college. I recently came back around a year or so ago, because I enjoy making edits and wanted to indulge in my interests again, only to find out that 90% of Panic-related content online has just been overrun with misinformation/Brendon-haters etc. It was honestly jarring for me because so many of the things people claim as evidence of Brendon being horrible (That he assaulted and abused Ryan, that the band split up because Brendon forced Ryan out, that Ryan was basically forced out of the frontman role, etc…), are just so crazy to someone who knows that’s just not accurate! Your blog has reassured me that I am not crazy and the way I remember things is not a figment of my imagination lol. Even though I was very young when some of these things were happening, my older sister was OBSESSED with Panic and I was into whatever she was into, haha, we still reminisce to this day. I have been literally harassed on TikTok for commenting “in defense” of Brendon Urie underneath a post where someone insisted that every time he got near Ryan on stage, it was without Ryan’s consent. I knew that Brendon had “got cancelled” but I had no idea that people were that serious about it… When half of the things they claim aren’t even real. I know it’s not their fault that they’ve consumed misinformation, but there is no changing people’s minds, even with evidence, which is sad to me. It really sucks that newer fans of the band have such a bitter, twisted narrative around the band’s early eras and the split. But so many of the things they reference happened before they were probably born, yet they swear they’re more knowledgeable than someone who was kinda there…

Anyway, I’m sorry for the wall of text, I just needed to get that out and I really appreciate the time and effort you put into your blog! Not only is it just fun to read, but it really takes me back to my growing-up years, and it’s refreshing to see a take on PATD that’s more “normal” in my eyes.

You put this so well oh my goodness. 100% yes to everything you said. I've heard similar things from some other returning fans over the past couple years and I just relate to all of it so much. I mentioned at the bottom of this post how I drifted away from the Panic fandom for about a decade and coming back was so confusing at first. But trying to wrap my mind around everything also helped me understand modern politics in a way, though? Like now I can see how it's totally possible that a large crowd of people can literally invent their own reality, readily believe whatever they hear in their echo chamber, and then willfully ignore facts, evidence, and firsthand accounts if those contradict the narrative they'd prefer to believe.

Sometimes I'm sad for some newer P!ATD fans who could easily spare themselves a lot of stress & perceived injustice by simply learning about the real band & members. But they're free to focus on whatever they want, I suppose. I'd rather spend my time focusing on fun memories and organizing my little Special Interest mess lol. I’m also happy to clarify stuff or try to answer questions if people are genuinely curious... it’s fun to see others who are interested. Anyways, I'm so glad you're still a fan of the band! Sorry it took me months to reply. And I love your wall of text because it means you care. 🧡

[beardedmrbean]

The White House and its media allies ran a coverup for President Biden after he maligned former President Donald Trump’s supporters as “garbage” — going so far as to edit an official transcript of his remarks, to the outrage of conservatives and other critics who called out “flat out lying” by Democrats and their allies.

Democrats went into damage-control mode Tuesday night due to the president’s trash talk, claiming that Biden hadn’t intended to demonize his party’s political opponents just seven days before voters head to the polls.

“The President referred to the hateful rhetoric at the Madison Square Garden rally as ‘garbage,’” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement.

The White House in a transcript of the speech also added an apostrophe to the 81-year-old’s poorly timed criticism less than five days before the 2024 election.

“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American,” the transcript read.

In a follow-up X post, Biden added: “Earlier today I referred to the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally as garbage — which is the only word I can think of to describe it.”

“His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable. That’s all I meant to say,” the president claimed. “The comments at that rally don’t reflect who we are as a nation.”

Biden was referencing Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s joke at a Trump rally in Madison Square Garden on Sunday, when he referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”

“Donald Trump has no character. He doesn’t give a damn about the Latino community,” the president said on a call with Voto Latino on Tuesday that referenced Hinchcliffe’s humor.

“They’re good, decent, honorable people. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters,” Biden said, pausing slightly and leaning back before adding: “His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”

Some talking heads accepted explanation without question, including film executive Franklin Leonard during an appearance on CNN’s “News Night” Tuesday.

Tim Walz defends Biden’s trash talk about Trump supporters as other Dems distance from ‘garbage’ comment

“As someone who had a stutter growing up, it’s very obvious to me that there’s an apostrophe at the end of ‘supporter’s’ there,” he said. 

“He was referring to the garbage spewed by supporters, not simply the supporters themselves,” added Leonard, who has donated to both of Harris’ presidential campaigns, campaign finance filings show.

MSNBC host and Politico White House bureau chief Jonathan Lemire also accused Republicans of having “seized” on Biden’s comments to claim the president was criticizing “half the country” that backs Trump.

“It’s certainly a story on the Right, who are trying to paint this as the next ‘basket of deplorables,’” Lemire said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” referring to Hillary Clinton’s smear of Trump supporters during the 2016 presidential election.

“They’re trying to make a firestorm out of something,” added host Joe Scarborough. “Joe Biden obviously doesn’t believe that.”

“You can clearly hear Biden say ‘the only garbage I see out there is his supporters.. and .. and.. his demonization..,’” responded GOP strategist Matt Whitlock, accusing Lemire of “flat out lying here and spreading a dishonest transcript.”

“They edited it to say ‘his supporters’ demonization,’” Whitlock said. “Shameful gaslighting.”

Politico scribe Jonathan Martin went even further to argue Biden did not alienate “half the country.”

“Sure, Trump topped out at 47% and a good third of that vote is folks who aren’t enamored w[ith] him but loathe Dems more,” Martin posted on X. “So it’s not remotely half the country.”

The New York Times declared in another headline: “Biden Appears to Insult Trump Supporters as ‘Garbage,’ but Quickly Tries to Clarify.”

“That’s disinformation,” independent Substack journalist Michael Shellenberger fired back to the Gray Lady’s editors. “What Biden said is clear from the video. And now the White House has altered the official transcript in a potential violation of the Presidential Records Act.”

When reached for comment, the White House also refused to tell Axios national political correspondent Alex Thompson whether they had confirmed with Biden that he misspoke.

“Did they talk to Biden to ask him what he meant?” Thompson said he asked the president’s aides before relating: “The spokesperson asked to go off the record. We declined. They didn’t comment further.”

“‘The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.’ That’s a direct quote,” emphasized Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), Trump’s running mate.

“That’s what Kamala Harris’s boss said,” Vance said, posting a screenshot on X of how the remarks had been spun.

“Do @JonLemire, @alexanderburns, @politico have an ounce of integrity? Will they correct this obvious falsehood?”

Not all Democrats were displeased with what allies had cast as another Biden blunder, with billionaire venture capitalist Vinod Khosla saying his words were an “understatement.”

“Garbage is an understatement for MAGA extremists,” said Khosla, a major Harris donor. “Biden suggests Trump supporters are ‘garbage’ after comic’s insult of Puerto Rico.”

But Harris, 60, distanced from her former running-mate when asked by reporters on the tarmac before boarding Air Force Two for a campaign event in Raleigh, NC.

“I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for,” the vice president said.

Harris is trailing Trump, 78, in the seven battleground states of Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia by one percentage point, according to the RealClearPolitics polling aggregator.

Both Democratic and Republican pollsters are saying the election will be a jump ball heading toward Election Day, though early indications are the GOP is outperforming past showings in early and mail-in voting.

[sophieinwonderland]

Debunking Sysmed Misinformation

Yes dear, people who aren't saying they have a disorder, by definition, cannot be faking that disorder. If you truly believe that somebody who not only doesn't have a disorder, but vehemently denies having it, is faking that disorder... I'm sorry to say that you've been brainwashed. There's truly no other explanations for still clinging to the narrative that people who deny having mental disorders are faking them.

According to who? Where the source for this?

In reality, "system" is a pretty broad term with a lot of different uses in psychology, rooted in systems theory.

There are two ways to approach discussions of the word system. One as a community term. And one as a psychological term. First...

As a community term

Back in the 90s and earlier, it was assumed that anybody with multiple personalities were disordered. It was treated as if the experience of multiplicity was itself something that people needed healed from.

The early online community arose from this environment, many taking the presumption of a disorder at face value.

However, from these online communities arose the Natural Multiplicity community, which believed their multiplicity wasn't caused by environmental factors like trauma, but that they were just... naturally multiple.

The reason some early terms from older MPD literature ended up shared was because the natural multiples branched off from this older MPD community in the 90s.

I've mentioned this before, but the Natural Multiples were not outside invaders. They were separatists who originally falsely believed they had a disorder, some of which were even diagnosed and rejected that diagnosis. Some terms that originated in DID literature naturally carried over.

As a psychological term

If we were to look at its earliest uses in relation to DID, this definition probably wouldn't apply.

See, to the point that system was used by psychologists in relation to DID, it usually referred to an internal personality system within the brain. The "individual" wasn't the system. The individual had a system.

It's a small but important distinction.

The individual to psychologists is everything. It's the body. The motor functions. The subconscious. The things that aren't controlled by any alter at all.

The psychological term isn't the same as the community definition.

Within psychology, this language isn't unique to CDDs either. I mentioned systems psychology earlier, but the closer parallel would be Internal Family Systems therapy, which is based on the premise that everyone is a system of parts and that the mind is naturally multiple.

IFS is a transformative tool that conceives of every human being as a system of protective and wounded inner parts led by a core Self. We believe the mind is naturally multiple and that is a good thing. Just like members of a family, inner parts are forced from their valuable states into extreme roles within us. Self is in everyone. It can’t be damaged. It knows how to heal. 

This dates back to the 80s before the natural mutiple community formed.

Moreover, studies that have addressed non-disordered systems have called them systems, such as this one from 2017.

Additionally, psychologists have also referred to tulpa systems as being... tulpa systems. Here is Dr. Michael Lifshitz, a psychiatry professor at McGill University, discussing is study into tulpa systems in an AMA.

So in psychology, it seems that "system" is going to be a shared term going forward, with doctors using the term to refer to any plural regardless of disorder or origin.

Which makes sense, because aside from being what the community uses for themselves, any human brain with multiple self-conscious agents is going to technically be a system through the lens of system thinking.

Back to the anti-endo post!

I'm not going to deal with this too much. Mostly because it's not really in contention that much. Most non-disordered plurals will use "headmates," and similar terms instead. Alter is generally considered too clinical.

But I will say that it's funny how every time I see "alter" defined, it's always slightly different. Like, nobody seems to know where this came from, nobody has the primary source for the term's coining, and nobody quite agrees on what it actually was short for.

Wouldn't... the individual be exactly one? Like, the idea is that the brain makes different parts that are all part of one collective whole personality.

I don't quite agree with this take. But if we were to believe it, then surely the "less than one" statement cannot be mathematically true. If you cut a cake into slices, you still have one cake. You don't have less than one pie.

Also, where are they usually referred to as "multiple personalities?" Because that isn't true in the modern DID community. And it sure isn't true in academic literature written in the past 20 years.

LOL!

So now we're referring to the dictionary definition of a word. Without an ounce of self-awareness when you ignore that "system" is a common word with a lot of different applications. 🙄

Not even surprised at the hypocrisy.

Also not surprised that the OP is lying about the origins of "plurality" by non-disordered systems. And I can say confidently that OP is lying because Cambrian already tried correcting them in a reblog, and was blocked.

Which means this isn't merely accidentally spreading misinformation anymore. It's intentionally lying to hurt others. They know they're wrong and don't care.

For those who aren't aware, the term was not, in fact, popularized by Tumblr. See this page from at least as far back as 1998.

We don't claim that every multiple system/household is a happy loving cooperative one. What we do question is the *identification* of "real multiples" with the characteristics or symptoms of a psychological disorder. We go further: we question by what right or authority doctors and therapists are given sole jurisdiction over the definition of "an individual".

This is one reason our clan encourages use of the word "plural" rather than "multiple". "Multiple", even standing by itself, brings to mind MPD/DID, "multiple personality disorder", "dissociative identity disorder", which are specific diagnoses created by the medical/therapeutic community. "Plural" is a much more neutral word, more commonly heard in the context of grammar than psychiatry. (The other reason, of course, is that plural can be construed to have a broader meaning, applying to anyone(s) anywhere on the continuum who experience themselves as plural in some way. )

Aside from the timeline being way off, from the very beginning, the systems who popularized the word plural were non-disordered systems, and it was done intentionally to separate it from medicalized language like "multiple".

Also, the current definition of plural as an inclusive term has found its way into academic papers, such as Transgender Mental Health by Dr. Eric Yarbrough.

Which has been reviewed and publish by the American Psychiatric Association.

If you mean CDD spaces, nobody without CDDs are going into those spaces to invade them. This isn't a real thing that happens.

If you mean using the word "system" and similar, I'm sorry to tell you that this has been a share communal term since before you were born. And it's not changing.

Because you're the one who is coming into our spaces. You're the one coming into inclusive spaces and spreading hate. You have been repeatedly informed that the plural tags are inclusive, that "plural" is an inclusive label, and that system medicalists aren't welcome there.

You're the one who has been invading spaces.

Your trauma isn't my problem. The harm you're causing to good people is.

I'm not sure if "your workplace might discriminate against you if you're publicly plural" is the slam dunk argument you think it is!

I mean, like, do you think your workplace would be cool with what you post on your blog?

Have you come out as a system at your workplace and told everyone about your 8 My Little Pony fictives?

(Fictive is a word coined by endogenic plurals, by the way, since you care so much about terminology. 🙄)

Remember, if you don't want a kid to be a system, don't start traumatizing them until after their eighth birthday! /s

But really, it's always weird how people have these very firm sort of cutoffs and present them as objective fact, when that's not how the brain has ever worked.

And if you look at academic papers, one thing you notice is that they have a really hard time agreeing about the so-called cutoff. Different papers will say it's 5, 6, 8, 9 or 10. And even if they did agree, that should only apply to DID. It would be a mistake to assume the cutoff applies to other forms of CDDs like OSDD-1 and Partial DID without extensive research into them.

"Being a system" is a disorder now?

Can you show me where "being a system" is in the ICD-11 or the DSM-5?

Tell me... do you HONESTLY believe that?

As I've already shown, the non-disordered and non-traumagenic community has existed since before you were born.

In that time, it's only been growing. Studies and papers focusing on non-disordered systems have only really begun over the last decade. Research has ballooned, with Stanford University investing tens of thousands of dollars into an fMRI study of tulpamancers that is likely to be published soon.

There are countless pro-endo discord servers. System-related apps like Pluralkit and Simply Plural have been explicitly pro-endo. Major figures like Aimkid have come out as being pro-endo systems.

I figure it's only a matter of time before the topic is explored more explicitly on television. (Other than that one time Chicago Med did a tulpamancy episode.)

You say being endogenic is a trend. People have been saying the same thing about being transgender for the past 20 years. Parents of LGBTQ kids have said their kids were just going through a phase, only for those kids to grow into queer adults. Their predictions haven't proven true.

I see no reason to think you'll be right this time.

What I say is that the future is plural and pro-endo.

I think this is what all the current trends point to. The academic support. The increasing plural resources and awareness.

We are not going away.

We are not just a trend.

We are the future!

[multi-lefaiye]

actually yeah i'm just gonna go ahead and state this boundary real quick. i'm not saying this as an attack on anyone, but i figure i should say something b/c this does make me extremely uncomfortable.

anyway random people coming onto my silly posts to be self-deprecating annoy me and i'm at the point where i just block on sight.

genuinely if you blorbo tag a post... unless i say otherwise, go for it. that's fine. i love seeing those.

if you're coming onto my post where i jokingly self-aggrandize about how cool i am and how much people love me just to say that you wish that applied to you and no one loves you! i'm probably gonna dip! i'm sorry if that sounds mean and i genuinely wish you the best, but that's not what we're about my guy and i do not really want that on my post

[art-is-kayos]

Sight of a Star - Blue-ish Star Ryōshū and Don Quixote

[inkskinned]

maybe i'm a bitch but if i hear you go out of your way to judge someone's weight, i immediately lose trust in you & will probably forever find you a little unbearable . yes also the little floating bar over my head will start reading [hostile]. this is natural and u caused it.

[chirpsythismorning]

When byler is trekking the UD together in s5 and one of them brings up how they’re like Sam and Frodo 😳

[repurposedmeatlocker]

I gotta make a post about this. It will drive me insane otherwise. But I really REALLY like the way in which Beavis and Butt-Head incorporates the music video commentary segments within the context of the actual show.

On one hand, it is indeed a way for musicians and creators to be promoted, albeit in a satirical and tongue-in-cheek way, through the banter of two ignorant fifteen year old boys. But this does not mean these segments are floating around unrelated. Actually, the commentary segments are completely intwined within the world of the show. They are not just used as opportunities to make pop-culture references and trash the musicians, but as a jumping-off point for Beavis and Butt-Head to get into off-topic tangents. Ranging from simple questions to sparse recollections of their home-life. I can't say this definitely since I haven't exactly been keeping track, but it appears to me that most of the sparse information out there about their moms and family come from statements made during these segments. Then there are also all those moments during music videos where they aren't even paying attention to what is on-screen and instead are doing stuff like looking at magazines, trying to cook, fighting, falling asleep, etc.

This all is such an odd yet interesting window into their lives, and how much it revolves around their television. I don't think this is unintentional at all. The characters are first introduced in the pilot, as being parked in front of their TV getting off on a woman advertising exercise equipment. Mike Judge is indeed making some kind of commentary here regarding the modern dependence on TV and cable television (especially in the context of the 90s when the show came out). At the same time though, I don't feel like this is a completely mind-numbing experience in the case of Beavis and Butt-Head. In fact, I find their interaction with the programs on television extremely "active" whether it be actually constructing opinions about what they are watching (even if it rarely is more complex than 'this rules' or 'this sucks'), or deciding to do something based off of seeing it advertised or talked about on TV. When you think about it, most of the plots of the show use the television as a catalyst for the episode's plot, which just ties the TV to the show as a whole even more.

[auphelia]

I cannot stop thinking about Dottore negotiating with Nahida and the way his voice and demeanor shifts after she gives her verdict on his way of seeking knowledge

[pennamepersona]

the thing that finally let me understand wyll was seeing a couple posts about how he's like. unfazed in the beginning. this is normal to him

very "the day you were taken by the nautiloid was the worst day of your life. for the blade of frontiers, it was tuesday"

[ails-of-ardor-au]

Would this au rewrite or add to Bloodclan? While I like the idea of Scourge forming it, it often seems unnecessary cruel? Like how it's described and how Scourge is described. I thought that, due to what he went through, he created the group as a way to help those who suffered like him.

The only reason he agreed to help Tiger, was to betray him, and also gain more resources for the clan. It would be interesting if Bloodclan ever had an alliance to the clans as they can get items the clans otherwise wouldn't have. Plus, gain more new blood to prevent... the dreaded family tree

I agree heavily with your view here! It was so odd to me that, after experiencing such traumatizing violence, Scourge would then go on to… create a system that idolizes violence. Of course, this can happen as a means of a victim coping, but it’s just odd to me that Tiny, a young cat who was shown to be very curious and with a thirst for knowledge and to make himself be seen as “great”, would go on to make himself into a monster to achieve that.

I have some ideas on how to restructure BloodClan, but I think that, ideally, Scourge would focus more on the “blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb” thing. The streets are a cruel place with a very heavy “only the strong will survive; the weak have no place here” mentality… So Scourge comes in and pointedly MAKES a place for the “weak”, the forgotten, the alone — so that no one else will ever feel as he has.

Sure, he’s nowhere NEAR a perfect leader; he’s got a short temper and a sharp tongue and a tendency to leap before he looks, but… he didn’t even really want to be a leader in the first place. And he’s pretty young, as well; no one blames him for his flaws. He’s almost heralded as a god by his cats, who he has gathered, sorted, and protected fiercely… but he’s always held a grudge on the Clans of which he derived BloodClan’s name to spite them. His Clan is the greatest, one born of true loyalty, community, and protection…

The Clans of the forest should learn to take a page out of his book… But Scourge won’t be the one to take that first step.

I like to think that Tigerclaw, here, is a bit more paranoid and with clearer motives (though that’s another post for another time). He keeps his cards close to his chest, and keeps his enemies far and his allies further; he might seek BloodClan out specifically because it’s hard garnering control over the amount of cats he suddenly has under him, and harder still to earn his loyalty… but BloodClan is twice the size of TigerClan, and yet still thrives even in the worst of places. He might have sought advice, initially, and then an exchange of resources, an offer to merge and share… and Scourge takes his time deliberating on the offer of the tom who scarred him and clearly doesn’t remember him.

I’ll come back to his and sort it into more sense later 👀

[moment0moriss]

Shout out to my best friend who was absolutely SIMPING for the monsters in DOORS while I was fighting for my life the first time we played.

[fayesdiary]

Came to the realization that Robin is everything Grima wishes they were and I'm gonna spend an indefinite amount of time obsessing over it