wendynerdwrites

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Six years ago, my husband was adamant that we'd never get a cat. Now we have two cats and he switched coffee brands to one that feeds a shelter cat for a week with every bag sold.

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It has been brought to my attention that a large number of people probably don't know why Campbell's "monomyth" is bunk when discussing anything other than a piece of modern literature written under the direct influence of Campbell, in much the same way that a Freudian analysis of any story that was not written a) after Freud and b) based on acceptance of Freudian theory is bunk.

If you've studied English Lit and haven't done genuine rigorous dives into the serious studies of folklore, mythology, religion, anthropology and a number of other things, then you may have unfortunately been told by your literature professors that Campbell is not bunk. This is, indeed, unfortunate.

This is a solid takedown of why, both in terms of the fact that even Campbell's theory in and of itself is honestly so vague that it's much like a newspaper horoscope (you could shove anything in there and make it match if you tried hard enough), and then also in terms of engaging with the ethnocentric and also intellectually lazy nonsense it is.

Campbell was a literature prof who fully and completely believed in the Jungian (or at least branch of Jungian) premise that humanity has a collective psychic unconscious that is shared across the globe. He took single versions of stories, many of them in translation, massive numbers of them from cultures he did not know and did not understand, and hacked them up and reinterpreted them, out of context and based on Freudian and Jungian principles, to make a claim about a Universal Human Understanding.

This, of course, is ethnocentric bullshit.†

Now much like Freud was incredibly influential on the European literature of the early and mid 20th century and as such you absolutely should keep Freud in mind when reading, say, Sons and Lovers, Campbell was influential (and sadly continues to be influential) among lit and other creative spaces and is certainly applicable to, for instance, Star Wars and Labyrinth.

But much like Freud, you should not actually apply him to anything that wasn't written under his influence, because in terms of application to anything else, his theory is bunk.

It's also not taken seriously in literally. any. field. outside European lit circles and the visual media/etc that are their heirs. In fact the renowned folklorist Alan Dundes* said at one point, "there is no single idea promulgated by amateurs that has done more harm to serious folklore study than the notion of archetype".

tl;dr: fuck Joseph Campbell, stop letting him collapse the gorgeous array of human storytelling, mythmaking, meaning-making and metaphor into a boring tawdry (heterosexist and hetero-sex-obsessed) pastel, he is bunk.

But he's relevant to Labyrinth bc Lucas was a fanboy and also a producer, and the guy managed to convince a lot of people that he was legit.

†for instance just to start with the idea that there is only one version of literally any major cultural/folklore story is itself deeply silly; this is basically never the case. Even stories we here and now are used to thinking of as having one authoritative version - like the story of Achilles being only the Iliad - does not reflect the actual reality of the people of the time. Or us, for that matter: the cultures between the first written form of that epic and now have all of us reinvented, retold, reinterpreted and repurposed the story of Achilles to suit ourselves a million fucking times. There are a billion Achilles.

Fuck, man, you can't even claim there's only one version or one myth-set for fucking Batman, and he really was made up by one dude less than a century ago.

*who is himself not at all perfect, but who was at least an incredibly serious, dedicated scholar of folklore in its inception as an academic field

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Not to be nuanced on tumblr but I think it’s possible to believe that there are severe human rights abuses happening in Palestine right now and also believe that it’s wrong to try and rectify this by instilling fear in Jewish communities via violence.

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ALT

ALT

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Commissions open

i'm finally done with my exams so here we go updates prices!!

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some fandoms need to see this

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Some people really think that they can say the most misogynist shit as long as they specify that they're talking about white women

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Some people really think that they can say the most misogynist shit as long as they specify that they're talking about white women

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Doechii at the Billboard Women in Music 2025 on March 29, 2025 in Los Angeles, California

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iconic

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Once again recommending donations to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund. Not only is it a credible organization, you can donate any amount, so even if you don’t have much money, you can still contribute what you can towards humanitarian aid in Gaza. It takes donations via credit, PayPal, and mailed checks.

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Fucking classic.

For real.

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