#there we go now it doesn't matter lol

[tadpoles-and-daydreams]

A ramble on imposter syndrome and the accessibility of witchcraft

So, I’ve been thinking. I think a lot in case you haven’t noticed. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about the major imposter syndrome I’ve been feeling lately in regards to this blog. TL;DR is at the bottom of this post.

People have been, occasionally, sending me asks requesting my opinion on things/how I do things/what I know about XYZ topic. If you are one of these people, I promise I’m not vagueposting about you in particular- in fact, I love these questions! They’re so fun to get and they actually make me sit and think sometimes, or even encourage me to write out something that I’ve been meaning to for my book of shadows. Genuinely, they're wonderful asks to receive. These questions have made me confront something, however; my blog is still small, but some people actually like what I write and value my opinion even if just a little. 

I feel like a mimic hiding in the witchcraft community. I feel like, were people to truly understand my experiences, they would want to “expose” me for knowing so little.

So I sat down with those feelings and turned it over in my head and I’ve come to a conclusion. The fact is, I don’t do research. At least- not what I think of when people talk about research. My "research" consists of the occasional rabbit hole I go down, one and two halves of different books I never finished under my belt, what I see scrolling through various social medias, and conversations I've had with other witches. I check to make sure I'm not stepping on the toes of any closed practices- in fact, that's what most of my energy goes to when it comes to research. This isn't a complaint; I'd much rather know that my craft isn't appropriative.

But I don’t know much about mythology, even that of the deities I work with. I don't even remember the holidays and what they're for. I thought Nyx was an Egyptian deity until like four months ago because I'd just heard her name in passing as a child and had never looked into the mythology... Even though I mainly work with the pantheon she belongs to. Y’all, I’ve done like three spells that I remember. My book of shadows is a messy disaster and I love it but it's got so little information in it, because I rarely write things down. Most resources (especially mythology resources) are academically worded or difficult to read for me personally, and all of these things feel like secrets I have to guard with my life because if I were to ever say them aloud, people would know I'm a fraud.

Today I've come to the conclusion that that is, in fact, absolute bullshit.

Maybe it's not, maybe this post will make some people really upset, but in my practice it's bullshit. All of the above is a result of my ADHD and the fact that I am nothing if not a hands-on learner. My craft is mostly my own experiences because that's how my whole life is; I learn by doing. My ideal learning style is sitting with another autistic person whose special interest is whatever I'm learning about and just talking for five hours, but if that's not something I can do, puzzling it out myself is the next best thing. That's what I've been doing ever since I felt had a basic foundation for my craft. Hell, even before I had a foundation I was putting my own experiences into my craft because "Well that rule just doesn't fucking vibe with me."

This post is mostly for me, but partially for anyone who feels similar. We are not broken or doing witchcraft/paganism wrong. We are simply what happens when the kid who could never do homework ends up practicing the "religion/spirituality that comes with homework." Witchcraft and paganism, in my experience, is far from accessible when it comes to the typical image of it. UPG is what makes it accessible. So yes, my practice is heavily UPG, and I don't do as much research as I think people have assumed. But I'm going to let go of the idea that I'm a fraud, because frankly I know enough about witchcraft to have supported my practice this whole time and my deities haven't smited me yet so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

TL:DR:

Fuck the rules, I don't do much research. I've researched the "basics" and what I need to so I'm not stepping on any toes of closed practices, but people seem to think I know way more than I actually do. I've felt like I was lying this whole time but frankly witchcraft just isn't accessible to someone with my flavor of auDHD, so my craft relies heavily on UPG and I've decided that I'm not broken or wrong for that and neither is anyone else. I'm tired of seeing myself as an imposter just because I make my practice doable for me.

[thevagueambition]

It's so vile of JKR and the people she's boosting to paint Magnus Hirschfeld as some sort of race science enthusiast

The gay jew who was almost beat to death by Nazi thugs in 1920 for being loud about decriminalising homosexuality, women's sufferage, abortion rights, socialism, the horrors of war, suicide prevention for queer people, etc

Who only survived the burning of his pioneering Sexuality Institute because he was abroad and who died in France because he could not return to a homeland that did not acknowledge him as a German

You want to say he's the ~real Nazi~ for holding beliefs that were mainstream science at the time he held them?

Yes, Hirschfeld was a eugenicist, insofar as most doctors were prior to the Holocaust

Yes, he argued that gay people having kids would lead to sickly kids -- as an argument for why society should stop forcing gay people into heterosexual marriages

Hirschfeld was by no means perfect, but smearing the legacy of someone who was specifically, by name, targeted by the Nazis for being a jew, for being gay and yes, for pioneering gender affirming care, as if he was fucking Mengele

That is just fucking evil

(but the people who criticise her are antisemitic homophobes, right?)

[running-in-the-dark]

kinda disappointed with how this weekend went. I mean, it wasn't bad! but it was our first weekend in the new apartment, and I/we wanted to get a lot done. I already did a lot during the week (a lot for me, not a lot for most people I guess), but there's lots of things that I can't do/can't do on my own, either because I'm too short or not strong enough or I need someone else to hold something or whatever. which realistically just won't get done during the week because my husband works full time, so. it sort of sucks that only one very small, unimportant thing got done. 😔

[sysig]

Grump and not so grump (Patreon)

[that-was-anticlimactic]

time stops, but still your heart is beating

Ten minutes later, Megumi felt a soft thunk on his shoulder. He instinctively froze, fingers twitching, but relaxed when he saw that it was just Yuuji’s head.

Wait—

Megumi tensed again, perhaps even more than before, and slowly looked down at his shoulder.

Yuuji’s head was on his shoulder and he was dead asleep.

Well, Megumi wasn’t very tired anymore. Shit.

[or, megumi is gay and yuuji is pretty and gosh darn it megumi wants to lay his head on yuuji's shoulder so badly he's gonna explode]

💥6,471 words | itafushi💥

based off of this art by @arinavah <3 bestie i hope you know that i think about this art a lot... they bonk...

[frankensteinmutual]

I have three different endings in mind for the story I'm working on and I just can't quite decide which one to go with

[arcadequeerz]

I just do not give a single shit about lg-bt-q disc-ourse anymore.

[bobzora]

there are some bits of what they did with the rooftop scene that i like and others where i was like :/ this isn't as good as it could be. and this is an important scene lmao

[hypermascbishounen]

The thing about a lot of the purity culture stuff is how it's also propped up by the anti-intelectualism. Which is how you get people earnestly Charlie-day-cork-board style arguing why anything they don't like has incest subtext, while insulting anyone who actually cares about analyzing real incest subtext.

It's also hard to do any serious analysis of the state of queer works, when the well has been so thoroughly poisoned between prople policing who gets to write/enjoy it, vs writers who see regular engagement with the premise of their writing as a threat.

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

i keep having Thoughts about how in so many ways LL has so much potential to be a really hard-hitting, messy, no-punches-pulled exploration of what i call moral agency: not the agency to act on your beliefs, but the agency to have those beliefs at all. like, if you're being abused into internalizing a set of beliefs, or indoctrinated in such a way as to make you resistant to outside perspective, or having relevant information withheld from you even if you would be looking for it... you don't have nearly as much choice in the matter of what you believe as someone who isn't stuck in that position.

and like. the central antagonists alone are literally a massive, horrifically abusive cult that spans generations. and i really wish they had actually followed through on that, and done so with compassion for victims who might need to be held accountable, instead of treating them with hatred and dehumanization.

(and also, y'know. hadn't treated some characters who did bad things as if they had much, MUCH more agency, moral or otherwise, than they did at literally any point. COUGH FIVE COUGH COUGH COUGH)

there's just. so so so much interesting stuff to be dug into there, in a way that's deeply fundamental to the narrative where even a lot of stories about moral agency aren't, and i really wish i could scrape enough brain cells together to talk about it properly

[unproduciblesmackdown]

another specific scenario nice & simple like winston "isn't allowed to have a 'correct' cishet(tm) gender n sexuality anyways" "keeps immediately latching on to the nonbinariest people around him" billions goes yolo mode after going [just endlessly weather it at the sunk cost factory] firmly established itself as a shitshow and decides like i'm gonna hook up with a guy fr (has not already happened, in this specific scenario) and then does so, congrats to him. however, with all the precedent in the world, it's like here's your big anxiety about any autodidactic sex ed beforehand. here's your big anxiety about just general surveillance & malicious handling of it afterwards. no way anyone could have completely founded hangups about everything even further just indefinitely now. bonus points though he still goes to math meetup has real math friends over there who have Really provided the [yeah it's not actually a popularity contest here] arena & he's known them for years & let's say has at least One amicable person who talks with him out of it, maybe even two. congrats to him canonly for getting out of there, sure hurt him as much as they possibly could on his way out though, was legitimately the goal

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[starsonmarsy]

gaining weight because of doing better is a really taxing experience

[spaceoutdreamer]

Last time I drank, I started telling my coworker to get therapy

[i-am-agent-washingtub]

My most handsome boy 😛

[trahoalai]

"ehhh whats the deal with class of 2025" "istg class of 2025 doesnt have any school spirit" class of 2025 doesn't wanna be!!!!!!! here!!!!!!!