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Certain things really get under my skin. This is a general rant about those things, drawn from multiple instances of annoyance that have occurred recently, all within the Otherkin community:
1. Calling others "child" when you admit you have no idea of relative age (this-life or otherwise), especially if the person you are addressing is one of the moderators of the forum you're on and you are a newbie still posting under moderation. This is disrespectful when done in general, but INCREDIBLY disrespectful to do to one of the people RUNNING the mailing list you're decided to join.
2. The entire myth that the "burning times" involved people killing "magickfolk"... umm, no. It didn't even involve people killing pagans en-mass, the vast majority of those killed during that time period were Christians. Talking about being a "fae-born sorcerer" in those times who couldn't do anything despite how "powerful" you were is. just. plain. BULLSHIT. It perpetuates a false myth of humanity, and particularly Christians, as being cruel and evil and the enemy of otherkin and the non-human races we claim kinship with.
3. Claiming that your girlfriend being a vampire lets her immediately smell the blood from a tiny cut on your arm in the midst of a crowded highschool hallway. NO. It doesn't. Even if you postulate a moderately heightened sense of smell, there's just not enough blood for someone to smell it in a setting like that. It would be easily overpowered by the scents of so many people in one place.
4. Claiming that the sight of that same blood from a very small cut makes your vampire girlfriend struggle to keep control. Again, NO. Not unless there is something wrong with that person in addition to them being a vampire. You don't go around practically loosing control at the sight of your food, do you? Why would vampires? Vampires are by nature PREDATORS... predators don't react carelessly or "lose control" at the mere sight of prey. Stop reading silly teen vampire romance novels for information on vampires and start taking your otherness seriously.
5. If you're going to make a map of a place you remember, try using some common sense; if the geological features on it doesn't match what would be produced by standard earthly geologic processes, either you are misremembering things or you'd better have a damned good reason why geological processes there and here are so different. Erosion, and other natural processes, are not likely to significantly differ from world to world; particularly on worlds similar enough to both sustain humanoid life. Magic does not mean you can completely disregard the laws of nature. By the same token, use some common sense before you jump on the bandwagon and say you remember the terrain of a map with such obvious flaws. You only make yourself look silly. LOOK at the maps you're presented with and really evaluate them against what you know of the natural world here on earth. Try to see if they make sense. Use some gods-damned critical thinking already!
6. Likewise, if you're going to make a map of a city or town you remember, also use some common sense: if you have a huge "temple complex", a market, a stables, a "weathermancy" spire, an armoury, a practice field, an outdoor ritual area, and a stage... it's PRETTY DAMNED UNLIKELY that your village is going to have just TWO HOUSES in it! I've seen fucking D&D town maps planned out better than that! And if that's all you've remembered so far, fine, but then maybe you should rethink making a map at all because maps with lots of significant features completely missing *aren't that useful*. (Especially if you've left no apparent blank areas on them where other things could possibly exist and be filled in by yourself or others.)
7. In short, and to sum up all of my points, I'm going to steal a quote from http://wicca.timerift.net/index.html "You want your religion taken seriously? Stop treating it like fandom."
1. Calling others "child" when you admit you have no idea of relative age (this-life or otherwise), especially if the person you are addressing is one of the moderators of the forum you're on and you are a newbie still posting under moderation. This is disrespectful when done in general, but INCREDIBLY disrespectful to do to one of the people RUNNING the mailing list you're decided to join.
2. The entire myth that the "burning times" involved people killing "magickfolk"... umm, no. It didn't even involve people killing pagans en-mass, the vast majority of those killed during that time period were Christians. Talking about being a "fae-born sorcerer" in those times who couldn't do anything despite how "powerful" you were is. just. plain. BULLSHIT. It perpetuates a false myth of humanity, and particularly Christians, as being cruel and evil and the enemy of otherkin and the non-human races we claim kinship with.
3. Claiming that your girlfriend being a vampire lets her immediately smell the blood from a tiny cut on your arm in the midst of a crowded highschool hallway. NO. It doesn't. Even if you postulate a moderately heightened sense of smell, there's just not enough blood for someone to smell it in a setting like that. It would be easily overpowered by the scents of so many people in one place.
4. Claiming that the sight of that same blood from a very small cut makes your vampire girlfriend struggle to keep control. Again, NO. Not unless there is something wrong with that person in addition to them being a vampire. You don't go around practically loosing control at the sight of your food, do you? Why would vampires? Vampires are by nature PREDATORS... predators don't react carelessly or "lose control" at the mere sight of prey. Stop reading silly teen vampire romance novels for information on vampires and start taking your otherness seriously.
5. If you're going to make a map of a place you remember, try using some common sense; if the geological features on it doesn't match what would be produced by standard earthly geologic processes, either you are misremembering things or you'd better have a damned good reason why geological processes there and here are so different. Erosion, and other natural processes, are not likely to significantly differ from world to world; particularly on worlds similar enough to both sustain humanoid life. Magic does not mean you can completely disregard the laws of nature. By the same token, use some common sense before you jump on the bandwagon and say you remember the terrain of a map with such obvious flaws. You only make yourself look silly. LOOK at the maps you're presented with and really evaluate them against what you know of the natural world here on earth. Try to see if they make sense. Use some gods-damned critical thinking already!
6. Likewise, if you're going to make a map of a city or town you remember, also use some common sense: if you have a huge "temple complex", a market, a stables, a "weathermancy" spire, an armoury, a practice field, an outdoor ritual area, and a stage... it's PRETTY DAMNED UNLIKELY that your village is going to have just TWO HOUSES in it! I've seen fucking D&D town maps planned out better than that! And if that's all you've remembered so far, fine, but then maybe you should rethink making a map at all because maps with lots of significant features completely missing *aren't that useful*. (Especially if you've left no apparent blank areas on them where other things could possibly exist and be filled in by yourself or others.)
7. In short, and to sum up all of my points, I'm going to steal a quote from http://wicca.timerift.net/index.html "You want your religion taken seriously? Stop treating it like fandom."
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Thanks though. Maps have been going around lately. I wonder what sparked the map thing?
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*chuckles* The ironic thing is that I keep trying to promise myself that I'm going to stop getting into arguments with these sorts of people, I'm just going to avoid people who are displaying their stupidity and focus more on putting out signal myself to improve the signal to noise ratio in the face of their fluff, but I haven't been able to hold myself to that. I'm not sure it's in my nature, I see that shit and I really want to go for the kill. Though at the same time, I think of some of the people who were most helpful to me when i was going through my own phases of insanity as a newbie to the community and I thank the gods they didn't do that with me. I kind of wish I could live up to that example.
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*cheering*
Lys
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Stuff like this really makes me have just the opposite reaction. I don't tend to stop posting on Otherkin forums when stuff like this comes up, I tend to start posting more. My attempt to pump up the volume and drown out some of the noise with actual signal.
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Yes, I am an evil wench.
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There was a time when I had the motivation to jump in during times like these but I simply lack the desire to be bothered by it anymore. Okay, yeah, and I'm currently being pleasantly distracted by other things.:)
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YESYESYESYESYESYESMOTHERFUCKINGYES THANK YOU.
In other news...this post was refreshing. VERY refreshing. Almost makes me want to start a rant of my own though I might just link this and spread it around with your consent ^^
~Duo
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The proper way to respond to this is to refer to the offender as "My sweet wookums." Also, any references to their ideas should include the word "widdle" or "pwecious."
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Well that doesn't quite seem fair.
Here is the map again:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/0803/siluresina/map.gif
Here is one view from a second story terrace of the main house looking southward across the creek. You can see a few of the huts the People live in and the spire of the Temple:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/0803/siluresina/pntg2.jpg
Just because I only labeled the main house and the house of the Captain of the Adrastai with the word "house" does not mean those are the only 2 in the village Jarin. It merely means they are among the main landmarks.
I know my own village. When Selar was destroyed and I died at the Gate, many spells put in place previously by myself and my weathermancer brother activated and changed the vibrational frequency of the realm within that particular weather grid, effectively transporting the village and Temple complex into another plane of existence, and saving my People when I could no longer do so.
Sarna still exists though Selar physically does not. Had you been keeping up with my lj, you would know this. Where do you think
Also, I posted my reply to Tass's entry before I had read the other comments, and had not seen you and others picking apart the geological errors the artist made, an artist who freely admitted that some features might be wrong when it was posted, until after I submitted my comment. I agree with you that the lake looks strange and does not conform to natural geologic regularites, but that does not invalidate the map as a memory.
You have a bee in your bonnet, and need to cut people some slack. Past life memories filtered through a new body's hardware are often sketchy. That's one reason why I made the map, to clarify the placement of things in the village in relation to each other in my own head, as when I visit, it is usually within one room of the house or other limited area. It is helpful to me to have the map, and
If you think the map is poor quality, that is your opinion and you are entitled to it, but you cannot know for certain unless you actually "travel" there out of your body and see it for yourself.
Re: Well that doesn't quite seem fair.
First, there's the creek. It runs directly past the hot springs, on your map, separated by about the width of the stable. Yet it does not flow into the hot springs, nor do the hot springs flow into it. Water seeks out the lowest point, in nature. Not to mention the fact that rivers, creeks, and similar bodies are surrounded by their own watersheds; all groundwater in an area would be draining towards the creek, not building up in underground chambers with hot igneous rocks, as would be necessary for the formation of hot springs. Plus there's the fact that a hot spring suitable for bathing would typically need a combination of a cold spring and a hot spring mixing together to create a warm spring; attempting to bathe in an undiluted natural hot spring tends to result in death.
Next there's the little fact that there is no sign, either on your map or in your picture, of any agriculture beyond a single greenhouse about twice the size of the stables. A building that size would not provide enough food to feed the horses in the stables, let alone all the citizens of your village. And fixed-location villages like this are the products of agrarian cultures, not hunter-gatherers (which are *always* migratory), so I highly doubt that the majority of your food comes from the surrounding forest.
And speaking of hunter-gathererers vs agrarian societies, a quick look at your picture reveals another disparity; your styles of architecture are completely inconsistent. The temple depicted there is rather european in style, using worked stone to form it and is very large and angular. But the people themselves live in huts that look more suited to plains indians. It's very unlikely that a single people's architecture would diverge that much so that the buildings appear to have no relation at all to one another stylistically. There's also the fact that plains indians and other cultures who would have dwelled in huts like that would have had markings and other embellishments (awnings, etc) on the huts to differentiate them from one another; yours all look identical.
Finally, if that picture is the second story of the main house looking southward across the creek, then your map is COMPLETELY screwed up. In your picture, the spire is completely visible, but according to your map it is supposed to be far, far to the left past the kitchen and armory and practice field. The only things you should see looking due south from the house depicted on the map are some huts, the creek, and MAYBE a corner of the kitchen but probably not because it would be blocked from view by the rest of your own house, depicted on the left in your picture.
I do have a bee in my bonnet, but it is BECAUSE of completely obvious stuff like this that people overlook when they're trying to filter memories through a new bodies hardware, and I don't think giving people slack over it benefits them any. It just encourages them to keep on spouting stuff that is logically completely inconsistent with both external reality and with itself rather than actually checking their work with critical thinking and common sense.
Re: Well that doesn't quite seem fair.
Re: Well that doesn't quite seem fair.
The vegetable and flower fields lie both near the greenhouse and west of Kharie'l's house. You would not see them in the painting as it is looking toward the south and the fields lie to the northwest of the house.
In that post, the existence of the fields is also mentioned. I did not include them on the map. If I had colored it, I most likely would have, as they would have to be indicated by shading of some sort.
The architecture is what it is. I personally had nothing to do with any construction. I only know what exists. In both Europe and America, completely disparate styles of architecture and use building materials often co-exist side by side due to having been built over a span of many years, and due to the various functions of the buildings. A scyscaper full of offices does not look the same as a single family home. Since Sarna has also been inhabited for many years, the same is also true there.
The main house is made of local stone which is rather pink in color. It was made of large blocks, then the parts of the outside walls were "flowed" by the geomancers to smooth them and make them more attractive.
The Temple was constructed of a white stone also found locally and elsewhere throughout Tulari territory. It was used specifically for buildings of "higher" rank and function rather than residences.
The huts have nothing whatsoever to do with the teepee tents of American Plains Indians. How you think that makes sense at all is beyond me, yet you accuse me of not thinking critically. The huts are made of bricks made of local clay and then covered in a white stucco-like substance so that they will reflect heat and not become little ovens. Awnings are not necessary because of the doorflaps made of deerleather which are hung from the inside. Architecturally, they have much more in common with the behive huts of Celtic Druids than anything else on this world. They do all look alike, and I think our people know the locations of their own houses after having lived in them for several centuries without having a need for markings on the outsides. One quickly learns the specific edge configuration and characteristic hang of one's own doorflap and the colors and pattern of one's own window rainbeads.
What is visible of the Temple in the painting is only the topmost peak of the spire sticking above the trees. It is far from "completely visible". It is very tall, and is the tallest bit of architecture in the village. One can always see some portion of it from just about anywhere in the village, including my second story terrace.
I never claimed to be the greatest artist in the world. Every painting and map will have some flaws. What is important is if it brings up a corroborating memory in someone else. We get to share our memories and stories with each other and thereby assuage some of our feelings of being alone on an alien world all the time and our longing for Home. The fact that the artwork presented is not made by a cartographer with GPS aligned survey equipment to hand is of little consequence when that is the goal. You are missing the forest because of trees that do not quite match what you expect to see. Just because that is so does not negate the existence of the forest for the rest of us.
*smirks*
*amused*
~Duo
Re: *smirks*
Re: *smirks*
~Duo
Re: Well that doesn't quite seem fair.
As for the waters of both mixing, funny that's not what the map shows at all; it shows the creek and the hot spring separated by the full width of the stable. Not touching, not mixing, not part of a single body of water. It specifically shows the creek flowing past the spring, untouched.
And the fish population increases in the creek because of it mixing with the spring? Fascinating. That close to the sea, a well-type "hotspring", which is probably what your ancestors would have created; an artificial shaft down into a hot portion of the earth's crust; would very quickly get filled up again with salt water as it lowers the water table in the area. Killing most freshwater fish in the creek as the mixed water becomes brackish. Let's also not forget that fish don't deal well with temperature changes in the first place; and as the temperature of water rises, the oxygen saturation tends to fall. Fish in the creek would DIE if the waters mixed. Mmm, real yummy breakfast.
Moving on; so the "vegetable and flower" fields are to the west, huh? I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume for the moment that both the vegetables and the "flowers" are food sources for your people and that the fields themselves are large enough to extend off the map you've provided; that still doesn't explain where you'd be getting little things like grain and wheat. Exactly what are the horses being fed? Broccoli?
Not to mention that your little post about
You're right that in Europe and the Americas, completely different building styles exist side by side; however, this is the result of massive waves of immigration and buildings built centuries apart. As our technology has changed, we stopped building log cabins and started building skyscrapers; the two have never been seen right next to each other. Skyscrapers and family homes are also made of comparable building materials. Worked stone is quite different from clay bricks.
Next, I did not say anything about the homes being related to teepees. I said huts. http://www.texasindians.com/wichita.htm http://www.kstrom.net/isk/maps/houses/hidatsa.html http://www.stuhrmuseum.org/tourlodge.htm Contrary to popular belief, the Plains Indians did not just live in teepees.
As for them being made of bricks of local clay; the huts are round. Are your people going out of their way to make curved bricks, with the size of the bricks needed changing every time you go up to maintain a classic beehive shape? Why not just make square buildings in the first place, as they obviously have the building techniques down for that, as evidenced by your own house? As for window "rainbeads", I really doubt that a curtain of woven *beads*, with natural gaps between them, are going to be all that effective for keeping rain out.
And again, the spire is clearly visible from your second story window but according to your own map it should not be. You'd see out over the roof of the kitchen before you would see anything that was attached to the temple, and even then it would only be the rearmost part of the temple visible. The weathermancy spire is up near the topmost part, so you'd have to turn even further left to see it. And there are no huts in the same direction from your house as the spire, they're due south while the spire is almost due east and just slightly south.
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Taking the "anything is possible in an infinite universe" idea too far tends to lead to the idea of the perfect elves that never have to use the bathroom or sleep despite how much they eat and exert themselves. (IE: early computer/video-game role playing characters). Ultimately two dimensional, without the spark of life or the ring of truth. It tends to lead to ideas of idealized perfect communities that just happen to lack economies or real means of providing for their citizens. It leads to perfect societies dreamed up where everyone in sight is a noble or a royal or a guardsman or some fantasy role-playing character class or VERY occasionally a merchant and you're left wondering "where are all the elven farmers"?
Not to mention the fact that, if anything is possible, that does not mean that everything that is possible is relevant to us in the here and now. If, by some wild chance, there was a plane of existence somewhere wherein the moon was in fact made out of green cheese, I doubt very much whether the lessons of such a place would be relevant to us here and now. The laws relevant to our existence now differ dramatically from the laws that would be necessary to produce such a place. At best, we could relate to it as symbolism, and little more. And at that point, past life memory becomes little more than dream interpretation.
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===I disagree on the "little more",,,,and the question is not wether the memories are accurate or not, true or not...but what one really does with them here.
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I also think that what one does with the memories here, and whether or not the memories are accurate, are interrelated. Yes, ultimately, none of us can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that our memories are true. But we can see if they are internally consistent, and consistent with experience here on earth. Among other things, checking through critical thinking in this manner lets us change the way we relate to memories here and now. We can look deeper to determine if we are misremembering something, or we can choose to stop relating to what we do remember as primarily literal and look at it more symbolically in order to see not what it tells us about the universe, but what it tells us about ourselves. (I personally favor working with all memories in this latter way in addition to taking them literally.)
I think there's a point where the anything is possible idea tends to lead people into trouble, usually when they start to conflate anything is possible with the idea that everything is equally likely and/or the idea that nothing else would really have to change in a world where those things are possible, as if the laws of nature were not all interconnected with one another and with everything that exists in a given realm. When you stop dealing with things that are relevant to this life, I think you also tend to lose touch with this reality. At that point you start getting drawn into psychic wars, generally with products of your own fears, or start relating to everything on the astral as if it was literally true (I can't think of a better example than Maduin, who claimed to have been taken to Jurai by a mech on autopilot that just happened to be sitting right where he entered the astral and learned he was their lost prince.) Possible? Sure, it's an infinite universe. Probable? Not in the least. Societies don't tend to wait around for lost princes who have not just gone missing but actively reincarnated; they appoint a new ruler and move on. And that's not even getting into how they would have found him here and left a mech right where he'd enter the astral pre-programmed to take him to Jurai. Hell, for that matter, why send an unmanned mech on a rescue mission for your lost prince, why not an armed escort who could explain to him that he had to come with them, rather than relying on luck to get him in the mech in the first place? Again, critical thinking shows all of these holes, and I think we do ourselves a disservice when we abandon its use in examining our memories and other metaphysical experiences.
My two pennies
NOOOOO! But its TRUE, I swear I remember it! *hides the psychoactive drugs*
Anyway, I don't exactly jivve with the 'anything goes' mentality. Then again, this is coming from someone who has grown exceedingly skeptical of his own memories, as you well know. If its okay to believe that, then its okay to believe...well, anything really. It takes meaning away from what could actually be true. However, I do also agree that it also largely depends on what you do with them here. Its so easy to fall into the temptation of becoming lost in the past (sadly, I've known this from personal experience). There is also the possibility of embellishment, and possible corruption that can occur from percieving these things through the filters of current life, culture and even species you are currently inhabiting.
Maduin, I believe, is sadly engulfed by his own overactive imagination. I could name a few other people but we all get the idea by now.
~Duo