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November 3rd, 2005

jarandhel: (Default)
Thursday, November 3rd, 2005 09:39 pm
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."