#tiny divinities

[smallgodseries]

[image description: A black pony with large rust-brown eyes and a smiling pumpkin on her hip stands on golden and orange fall leaves. Behind her, the dark sky is filled with stars and her flaming orange mane shines brightly against the blues of night. Text reads “24, The Small God, Pumpkin Spice”]

• • • • • 

People assume she’s a newcomer, a fad, a frivolous flash in the pan.  But she was there when the first pumpkin pies were being baked; she was there when the first colonist cookbook was published, in 1769.  She was there when the British raided the rest of the world for flavors they could steal, and while her appearance may be sweet and adorable, her hooves are soaked in the blood of empire, for without conquest, she could never have been born.

But people, unwilling to consider the structure beneath the surface, look at her and see only big eyes, a flowing mane, a coat as soft as silk and as dark as midnight, and they mock her adherents, call them “basic” as if anything could be considered truly basic when it had been built through so many crimes.

Every piece of her was stolen.  Every pinch and particle was the subject of a terrible war.  The price of cinnamon is slaughter.  The fee for nutmeg is subjugation.  And now we serve her sacraments with whipped cream and sugar sprinkles, as if both those things had not also been stolen at some point, as if a foamy cloud could somehow clean the blood from those long lashes.

In these modern days, her most common manifestation is blended with sweet cream and coffee—a drink that has many gods of its own, that has sparked even more wars than her cinnamon pungency.  But for most of her time, she has been carried in the pie.

Pumpkin pie.  The ultimate jewel in the crown of colonialism.  Cooking techniques from Europe, spices stolen from India, Asia, and the Middle East, and a vegetable crown taken from the Americas, sliced and mashed and mixed until its wildness is lost, subsumed into custardy blandness, become one with the melting pot.

She’s not a newcomer.  And she’s not nice, either, and so few of those who worship her understand, anymore, that she’s not a god of whimsy or basic delights.

She is, now and always, a god of war.

• • • • • 

Please join Lee Moyer (Icon) and Seanan McGuire (Story) each week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for a guide to the many tiny divinities:

WordPress: https://leemoyer.wordpress.com/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/smallgodseries/ 

Homepage: http://smallgodseries.com 

Mastodon: @SmallGods@mastodon.world 

[miss-crazy-rose]

The fact that I have no idea who won what at the BAFTA last night but I know that David Tennant had 3 outfits, one of which included a kilt, and the opening sketch was a Staged style bit with Michael Sheen about a dog called Bark Ruffalo

[arealtrashact]

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas...

[bbymoonlightbae]

This album heals me sm ᥫ᭡

[ninjasmudge]

this is fangfei one of my fave ocs, theyre a cloud dragon, a shameless bitch and they smell like cheap perfume. theyre allergic to expressing genuine emotion, probably covered in their own blood and having a great time. their fangs are too big to fit in their mouth properly, i love them.

original bloodied version of the second pic under cut bc they pick a LOT of fights

u need to understand that this isnt a super angsty picture, fangfei loves fighting and the only reason theyre upset is bc they cant work up the couage to ask this one god over to watch a movie or something

[silvaris]

flowers by Gabe Liu

[everlastiingiimmortals]

i don't get enough of dangerous jing yuan. i don't get enough of this man thoroughly pissed. i don't get enough of the snapping of electricity on his armor, the gradual darkening of the sky, the way his hair almost seems to flare out even more due to the static charging the air around him, around the snarl behind every word and bare of his teeth. and it serves him well, as people, especially his enemies, underestimate him greatly due to his gentle nature. do people forget he is an emanator? do they forget that the hunt does, in fact, guide his moves? do they forget the utter destruction he is capable of? a single step and swing and he can cleave waves of enemies in half as effortlessly as running a scythe through grass. do people forget this? and for those who have only known the luofu in its years of peace (those that, to jing yuan's merit, he has worked extremely hard to cultivate), are they even aware of that side of him in the first place? the two images the public has of him and of his legends are not without their reason, after all. general jing yuan almost seems nothing like jing yuan of the high cloud quintet.

i think so much about the fact that yanqing clearly has not seen all that jing yuan is capable of. he was sent away when jing yuan faced phantylia with the express. i wonder who of the modern luofu has seen jing yuan's capabilities, for he was already general and very tired when yukong and fu xuan rose to their seats as members of the six charioteers. i think about the fact that jing yuan is willing to do the worst of what he does in secrecy, because war is ugly and he tries to save as many lives as possible, meaning that many people have not seen the extent of what he can do in battle. i think about how jingliu describes him in such a cruel manner, destroying plans, breaking the enemy's strategy, and i think about what a jing yuan at the height of his power and at the end of his mercy might be, because even with cirrus he did not harm their vessel, nor did he attempt to actually harm cirrus themself at all.

i think about the annihilation that the hunt brings to every world they strike, and if jing yuan holds a fraction of that power, and if as a member of the high cloud quintet he was already terrifyingly destructive... well. i think it's no wonder a jing yuan without limits is something he wants no one to see.

[wall-e-gorl]

Arlaen and the Raven Queen, making a choice

[bonefall]

SKYSTAR DOES WHAT TO ARC

Man send this guy to cat hell let his dark forest edition be one eye eating him

HE MAULS HIM

Arc goes into his territory and Skystar RIPS! THAT! BOY! UP!!!

And then later Skystar uses the will of StarClan to justify his invasion of RiverClan, which BTW is 10000% consistent with A Forest Divided (a post redemption arc book) where he completely misinterprets Fluttering Bird in a way that would get him more power.

So if you just ignore the fact they tried to write him as being so scared :( he doesn't know what he's doing :( for the 400th time, it totally tracks. That's Skystar. That's who he is.

[luphorics]

his eyes are up there, Tala.

ft. @jaythenugget's mk oc Dohyun :]

[gullivertravelstowonderland]

In the wise words of my own Fic Notes...

WEEWOO WEEWOO NEW AMOD UPDATE!!! COME GET YALLS JUICE WEEWOO WEEWOO!

[magistralucis]

Headcanon that Huntmaster totally ships Orizyn. Perhaps not so much in a way where they are both Normal and Not Hateful, but tilted more in the pro-Trazyn 'he is mine to keep and I will thus keep him here' direction, and happy to help out his master on this front. Collecting '''specimens''' is the dude's job after all, and if I have interpreted The Infinite and the Divine correctly Huntmaster a) was the vessel through which the Headshot™ was achieved, and b) he took direct commands from Orikan and considered him most worthy at the final showdown. I think he'd be pretty stoked to have Orikan around all the time

[saintmachina]

freshly baked bread and headscarves and watercolor paints and dried bunches of lavender and baby animals and farmer’s markets and statues of female saints and embroidery and prairie dresses and backyard picnics but not in a tradwife way, in a gay way

[witch--tips]

🤖 WITCH TIP 🤖

For more specific communication via divination, you can use random generators online. I’ve linked a random item generator here which I used earlier today to ask my deity something He’d like as an offering from me today, and it worked out wonderfully

[upwards-descent]

My partner and I made another fantastic OC couple that I've been holding back on posting only because I haven't drawn them side by side yet and their height difference is

So yeah

[soldier-poet-king]

Wow some of y'all are allergic to fun and also the fundamental nature of love