#religion coding

[writingwithcolor]

Culture based on ancient Israelites, but they worship the sun and have tattoos

@mangomura asked:

Hello there!I’m writing a fantasy ethnoreligious group based off of the Ancient Israelites and Illyrian sun worshipers. In my story, these people are a nomadic group that worship a sun god known as “Shemesh.” (the Hebrew word for sun) They generally have light olive skin and wavy dark brown hair. As part of their culture, women and men tattoo their hands and foreheads with sun symbols. (This is based off the traditional tattoos among Catholic Croatian women that originated from old Illyrian and Celtic tribes.)

From what I’ve researched, tattoos are sometimes considered taboo in Judaism. I know it’s a fantasy culture, but I still want to be respectful to Judaism since I’m drawing some inspiration from the Israelites. With that being said, would tattoos be offensive in this setting? Is drawing from two cultures with different views on tattoos problematic?

For reference, I’m a Japanese, Mexican, and Black Catholic. So I’m not personally familiar with Judaism. Online research and articles have been my only resource.

I appreciate this blog so much and would value any opinions you could give. Thank you!

I’m not sanguine about having something coded as ancient Israelite that worships observable natural phenomena. A great deal of our cultural narratives about our early development specifically places us in contrast to cultures that worship something other than a formless, omnipresent God, and often specifically sun worship. Many Jewish people, both who do and who do not believe that Torah is divinely inspired or historical truth, believe that the intent of many of the laws, especially ones like the law against tattooing one’s body, may have been intentionally designed to set us apart from neighboring cultures, to create a cultural identity that was not compatible with assimilation with cultures that ate pork, had religious tattoos, or worshiped the sun. 

Many people credit that distinctness of identity, that separateness, with the survival of our culture through the centuries, so to see something coded Jewish, that is, implied to be us in some meaningful way, mixed together with those opposing attributes, would not feel like positive representation.

You don’t say a lot in your ask about what aspects of Jewish or ancient Israelite culture you’re using to code this group, other than a generally Mediterranean phenotype and your use of the Hebrew word for sun as the name of their god--if that’s about the extent of it, then you don’t have a lot of revision to do to keep the bones of your idea without directly associating recognizable Jewish coding with sun worship. What if you name the sun-god something else, and include inspiration from other Bronze Age cultures along with the foundation you drew from Jewish, Croatian, and Celtic sources, to create something that skips the discomfort of muddling Jewishness together with other systems? 

Basically, I don’t think it’s necessary to tear your idea down and start from scratch, just make it not overtly Jewish and you’ll have avoided a discomfort I’m sure you didn’t even know to look out for. Good luck!

Meir 

[arabian-batboy]

I really find it interesting how Zionists have no issues constantly using words like "Islamic" or "Islamist" or "jihadist" to describe the people they're killing without any fear of being accused of Islamophobia or that they're being bigots.

Because they know that we live in a world where anything or anyone remotely "Muslim" are automatically portrayed as inherently evil and deserving of death, especially in the US and other Western countries where Israel gets most of its support from them. So therefore, no one can be mad at them for killing all of these people, right? After all, they're only killing scary radical "Islamists" and "jihadists," NOT innocent people.

Meanwhile you would never hear any pro-Palestine people calling IDF soldiers "Jewists" or "Jewish extremists," even when they're literally branding the star of David onto Palestinians' faces and houses, instead we have to be very careful to not associate Judaism with Israel's crimes and are obligated to write a long essay about how we in fact do NOT want to kill every Jew in the world before we're allowed to show a shred of sympathy toward the thousands of Palestinian civilians being murdered as we are speaking.

Yet somehow that's not enough and they still hit us with the "when you say Zionists you actually mean Jews!" all while ignoring how they themselves aren't putting any effort into not demonizing Islam and Muslims with their words, because demonizing Islam and Muslims isn't an issue to them and the only way they can justify all the killing they're doing.

[mdemn]

your god comes and he is ordinary and terrible.

andalucia - lisa marie basile / the unabridged journals of sylvia plath - sylvia plath / christ in gethsemane, heinrich hofmann, 1886 / here come the regrets - epik high & lee hi / a city like a guillotine shivers on its way to the neck - ilya kaminsky / portrait of the illness as a nightmare - leila chatti

[canisalbus]

Imagine if Machete was Muslim instead of Catholic. His name would be something like Saif سيف, and Vasco would probably be something like Dhahabi ذَهَبِيّ

.

[sky-is-the-limit]

Captain Price is Lana Del Rey coded and Kyle 'Gaz' Garrick is Chase Atlantic coded.

In conclusion: they both know how to fuck and damn well.

[pixelatedraindrops]

Happy Birthday Yakou! 🚬💙🎉

The best roommate, mentor, boss, father figure and caretaker Yuma could ask for💕

I had to try to make something for him. I’ve grown to adore him almost as much as yuma as I kept putting them in various scenarios the past half year.

(its kinda for both of them since their birthdays are only a day apart from each-other??)

So yeah, birthday cuddles for them both~ 💜💙

[nighttime-thoughts]

The culmination of love is grief, to grieve deeply is to have loved fully.

[2dieavirgin]

look at my surgeon dawg im going to die

[americankimchi]

i am at any given point this 🤏 close to waxing poetic about the jedi code

[wackpedion]

Headcanon/Observation: Seth is Religious

Heyy so I saw someone being confused about this so Im gonna make a tumblr post about it now, basically based off things you see in the game, mostly the imagery shared by Seth and the church, you can make the interpretation that Seth is religious

For one, the church follows the Metal Fox religion (as stated in a loading screen), and you can see the church uses the fox not only in name but as a symbol as they have fox statues in their front yard. This is interesting because Seth shares this symbol, having a fox on the back of his poncho.

And while this sure is something, theres even more ties to be made between Seth and the church and its religion.

Seth has alooot of eye imagery between his regular and mystery phantom forms. He has an eye on the top of his hood, and in his phantom form its both on his front and back AND a necklace of the eye symbol

I found this perplexing for the longest time because there is eye imagery in the game but in every case I could think of its used in relation to the detectives, with the exception being Shinigami and her book of death but she is a mystery centred death god and has ties to detectives through our protagonist, as opposed to Seth who sure is an investigator but still not a detective and was very much on the enemy side and doesn't have a personal tie to detectives either

However you look at the church more closely and what do you see? Eye imagery, specifically in the windows and iron gates

This makes Seths ties to eye imagery make infinitely more sense if you are to assume hes religious, plus the fact his phantom form is wearing a necklace of it is reminiscent of Christians who might wear crosses

Now, for some additional notable mentions which I feel are less solid but have some basis and help strengthen my argument:

This dialogue could be interpreted that Seth has some sort of faith, an agnostic or athiestic person probably wouldn't defend someone on the basis of their religious status. However this could also be interpreted as some last ditch or desperate effort to defend the priest, as per his motives and also his role as a mystery phantom.

Another thing would be the fact all members of the church have tattoos/markings, usually tied to their eyes. Seth also happens to have one himself

however this could be a stretch as many characters in the game have face markings/tattoos, and Seths is green as opposed to the red sported by the church's members.

Also, Seth's profile mentions he likes 'Wind instruments',

I am not familiar with church or religious music so I can't say much, but from what I gather they play some part in church music? And the one most associated with churches, the organ, is a wind instrument.

And now, the biggest leap of all: He wears a monocle, which btw is completely unique to him in the game. This draws attention to his one visible eye, and as established earlier eyes are associated with the church

Anyway thats the end!! I hope you liked my post and normal level of digging for a character with like no screentime and now understand the idea that he is religious :3

[akechi-stole-my-heart]

"royal trio is so funny because akeshu are out here having violent sex and sumire is Also There" yes but have you considered what if she joined in. sumire taking a look at whatever the fuck akeshu have going on and deciding she's into it

[lord-squiggletits]

In the last salty asks post I unintentionally went on a tangent in the notes about how JRO wrote religious characters which is like actually something I want to bring up on its own so like

Is it just me or does JRO have some real misses when it comes to writing religious characters? Not like every religious character is badly written or evil, but like... several of the ones that are fall into really bad or unflattering/shallow stereotypes? It's hard to put my finger exactly on why I feel that way bc he does write some actually good religious characters (aka Cyclonus).

For example, characters like the Functionist Council and Star Saber are fine to me because I'm like. Well Functionism being religious in origin makes sense, it's an interesting interplay of how religion influences the state/how the state leverages religion to bend the populace to its own whims. Religious bad guys =/= all religious people bad. Star Saber is just some random zealot that wasn't meant to be that deep at all, and eh the Inquisition-type religious zealot can be cool even if it's just the vibes of it.

But then there's stuff like... Tyrest being a normal, rational, not particularly religious guy until he gets shot with a bullet that gives him brain damage, causing him to start ranting about Cyberutopia and thinking God is personally talking to him in his brain...? Like, idk, was it really the best idea for an antagonist to go "he is evil because he got brain damaged against his will w/o even knowing what really happened to him and also because he's brain damaged he's now literally delusional and became a religious (and genocidal) maniac." It comes off as really bad taste/not thinking the implications through as far as how it reflects on religious people (bc the whole "religious people are literally delusional and stupid to think that their gods could possibly exist" thing is tired and offensive). Not to mention kind of ableist w/ the whole "oh he became evil bc he got shot in the brain and now there's literally something wrong with his mind."

(Doesn't help that the MTMTE logbooks revealed that the original idea for Tyrest was to have his killswitch be about trying to identify and execute all of the criminals/"guilty people" on Cybertron, basically an extension of his role as Chief Justice which makes so much more sense and is way more interesting and compelling???? Certainly better than (gets brain damaged) "Ah I'm now going to genocide all cold constructs because God told me to")

And then Drift with spectralism which...which... basically the extent of that whole religion is the name of a single festival (the Lost Light festival the eponymous ship was named after), and some stuff about face/body paint and colors having spiritual symbolism, then the Guiding Hand/Primus stuff that's also shared with Primalism. But then you have Drift who's the main representative of this religion basically being written as a phony who doesn't even believe in the shit coming out of his mouth. Or if his beliefs are sincere, the way he acts is basically just "oooooh, I sense unclean vibes and read into the energy of the universe" which is played for laughs or mocked by the other characters most of the time. And Drift's character is written so inconsistently (and the general religious worldbuilding so one-dimensional) that it's hard to tell if Drift is supposed to be read as some kooky fake hippie type or if he's genuinely a representation of Spectralism in general. Like, idk, the best JRO could come up for for building a religion was "they wear certain colors and patterns on them and vaguely talk about sensing energy from the universe?" It literally feels like baby's first fictional religion or like, religion as understood by a non-religious/atheist person who sees religion as nothing more than an aesthetic or some quirky rituals.

I'm not saying the story had to be about religion or have religion be brought up in every conversation, it's just...... the way he wrote/did worldbuilding for it comes off as as very "non-religious person who doesn't have any particular understanding of religion/why people are religious tries to write what they think religion is about" and most of the time it's kinda cringe.

[okwhatsgolngon]

[bijoumikhawal]

Hm. I have dealt with antisemitic star trek fans, but given the times we live in and the recency of this post, as well as me not hearing of any recent major events about antisemitism in Trek fandom, let me check OPs blog real quick

Ah.

Anyway- DS9 intentionally paralleled the Occupation of Bajor with both the Holocaust and the Nakba, among other things, and one of the cast members who remarked on the similarity of Bajorans to Palestinians was Armin Shimerman, who is himself Jewish.

[containeraddict]

There’s just something about the way that Mary Magdalene is consistently diminished by the church despite being the first person Jesus appeared to post resurrection. Also she’s constantly demonized for being “sexual” but at the same time whenever men paint her they represent her in an overly sexual way. Anyways this mythology/religion fixation is currently kicking my ass :)

[kanyniablue]

harry is dog-coded & kim is cat-coded: yeah obviously

harry is sea-monster coded: ohhhhh

kim is skua-coded: ohhhhhhhh