Hauntedwizardtree

if you're from the USA, tag what you chose and what general region you're from (don't dox yourself, I don't need to know your hometown or any other security questions), using this map:

I'd also love to know if you were aware of the opposing connotation/definition or any of the various other pronunciations before reading this. I am not the least bit interested in what anyone thinks is ~correct~, only what they use and what they've heard before.

for non-USAmericans, I'm super curious if this linguistic difference exists outside the USA in any way, so I'd love it if you tagged your country as well.

reblog for sample size, you know the drill.

Thinking about it, I do believe that the big misunderstandings of the Greek gods on the Internet today (or in media recently) is due to a problem of… let’s say “character VS personification”. 

People have grown too much accustomed to the consumption of Greek myths and legends as… not so much “stories” but… as fiction. Which leads them to treat the Greek gods as characters of tales and stories. Which leads people to treat them like… well, like people. Like full humans. Thinking about their actions only in terms of human/social/psychological reasons and consequences. And people forget the very essence and nature of the gods…

The Greek gods are personifications. They are allegories, and their actions always reflect their actual nature as a part of the world or a human phenomenon. It is true that when you read the Greek myths as they reached us today, you will read what seems to be stories about super-humans, because said stories were given to us through epic poems and theater plays. But there was a whole theology and religious thinking behind those myths (to the point some of the ancient litetature of the Greeks was criticized by religious authorities for deviating from their actual beliefs) ; and there was an entire philosophy surrounding those myths. Literal philosophy - with Ancient Greek philosophers not only re-reading and interpreting the myths in the lights of their teaching, but also inventing their own “philosophical myths”. The Greeks had time to read and rewrite and discuss their own myths and stories for centuries and centuries - and thus these stories ended up with numerous layers of meaning and interpretations woven through them.

Which is why to fully understand a myth, one must look behind the simple story. A god in the story is never just a character, but always something else. Poseidon is a grudge-holding, monster-birthing deity prone to mood swings which place him alternatively as an ally or an antagonist - but it isn’t just because “he is like that”. He is like that BECAUSE he is the god of the sea, and the Greeks, as sailors and explorers and island-dwellers, knew very well that the sea was a changing and treacherous thing, the sailor’s best friend and worst enemy at the same time. The fact that Apollo is at the same time the god of truth, the god of beauty and the god of art isn’t just because it’s his hobbies - it is because for the Greek all these concepts were inter-connected, art being beauty, the truth being beautiful, the best art being the truthful art, etc… And as a result myths are always about something else than their own story. The most famous case being Persephone’s abduction. People keep treating it as just being a love story - forgetting that, beyond the story of a guy in love with a girl and a mother worried for her missing girl, it is actually also a fable for the brutality anf unfairness of death striking young people, and how a mother can deal with her grief. It is literaly the story of “Kore” (which isn’t a proper name, but just means “maiden” or “young girl”), being ravished by Hades (whose name is ALSO the name of the Underworld), of a young girl plunged from the world of the living to the world of the dead, and a distressed mother crying for her disappeared daughter… 

I can list on and on the examples, but I think you get my point. Yes, it is nice to know the story. It is better to try to understand them. The topic came when I read something about Zeus recently… It talked about the gods embodying “order” - and it listed Zeus, for after all he was the ruler of the cosmos, punisher of wicked ones and fighter of monsters, the god of justice overseeing all oaths and the basic principles of Greek society… But this text added that however, his behavior character wise was “much more chaotic”. Notably pointing out towards Zeus’ wild behavior around females of all kinds. It is true that a serial cheater with a HUGE number of lovers of all kinds, and lots of “bastard children” everywhere seems to contradict his role as a god maintaining order and morals… But again, the key is looking beyond that. Yes, Zeus is massively unfaithful on his wife and seemingly can’t keep his thunderbolt in his pants - if you pardon me the expression. But the question that nobody asks is… Why is he like that? Why does he do that? Just because he is a horny guy? That’s the superficial explanation, that’s the joke explanation. That’s not what the Ancien Greeks would have answered you. This precise topic is one I like to reuse frequently because it illustrates perfectly something that feels natural to those that read about Greek mythology from experts, and yet can seem like a sudden mindblow for those that only know Greeks myths from popular fiction. 

I do not recall where exactly I read this explanation - but I am certain it was in one of the books about Greek myths written by famous French experts, so it was probably from Jean-Pierre Vernant or Pierre Grimal, or someone of those waters. Why is Zeus such a horny dog? We have to think about his titles. “Father of Men and Father of Gods”. It isn’t just a nickname or a title, it describes what he does: he birthed most of the major Greek gods, and he birthed many ancestors of humanity. It also makes you think: what was Zeus’ first action when he became king of the cosmos, when he took over the world after fighting the Titans? He married, several times, and had numerous lovers, with which he birthed some very important gods. Through sex he actually created important elements needed for the world. Not counting the other Olympian gods, he gave birth at the beginning of his reign to the Arts (Muses), the Seasons (Horae) and Fate itself (the Moirai), basis for the civilized world and an ordered, stable cosmos. And who are the other children of Zeus, all those “bastards” children he got out of being unfaithful? Heroes. Heroes who build principles of civilization, heroes who destroyed monsters, heroes who threw down criminals and tyrants. Good things. That’s the thing with Zeus: he constantly lusts after women, yes, and he constantly has sex, yes… but most of the time, if not always, it is to create something good. He keeps procreating beings, things and people needed for the universe to form itself, for civilization to form itself, for the world to get better and evil/chaos to be defeated. Herakles and Athena and Perseus… Even through his unfaithfulness, Zeus keeps creating new agents and champions of order, law and justice. 

It is in fact quite interesting to look at Tumblr here, because on Tumblr there are favorite deities who are depicted right because people love them enough to go dig into their symbolism and their religious festivals and their philosophical meaning. Dionysos is the one that comes to mind. And then other deities whose deeper meaning gets thrown out of the window. 

A good counterpart to Greek mythology, in the approach of “character vs personification”, is Norse mythology. Because the Norse gods, as depicted and represented in mythological texts such as the Eddas, are actually “characters before the personifications”, the reverse of Greek gods which are “personifications which were given character”. I am not saying that the Norse gods aren’t personifications, that would be a stupid claim. But what I am saying is… Often people try to enter Norse mythology asking “So, this god, what is he the god OF?” because they assume Norse gods are like Greek gods, defined by their field of action and what they represent or rule over. When in truth, the Norse gods are defined by who they are, not so much by what they are. Odin is the one-eyed wanderer, and the eight-legged horse-rider king of the Aesir, and the cunning rune-master ruling over Valhalla. Thor is the very strong god, and the hammer-wielding jötunn killer riding on a goat-chariot, and the red-haired hero of Asgard who fears nothing and fished Jormungandr out of the sea once. Everybody knows today that Thor is the god of thunder and lightning - but it isn’t said, or explicitely spelled out in most of the Old Norse texts. It is not like Zeus who is explicitely said to use thunderbolts on his ennemies - Thor’s hammer doesn’t have lightning shooting out of it. To get this, to get what a Norse god is the “god of”, there is a work of research that needs to be done. For a Greek god it can be obvious due to their attributes and names (Hestia for example - her name literaly means “hearth” and she started out as the hearth being venerated, before being personified). For a Norse god, to get the “what” of the deity, you will need to look at the archeological remains of the religion and cult of Norsemen, you will need to theorize based on the etymology of the deity’s name and its relationships, you will need to collect the kennings and local expressions and other folk-sayings and interpret them. It is a para-characterization that isn’t obvious, or sometimes doesn’t even appear, in the Norse texts per se. Because in the Norse legends as they came to us, the gods are mostly defined as characters - by their function (guardian, warrior, king), by what they do (power to see far-away, power to know the future), by what they look like (missing one hand, or golden hair)… For exampe, for a very long time it was thought that Loki was the god of fire. It was a strong, popular and famous interpretation - but research and experts have proven that it is a late re-interpretation of the deity, who originally probably didn’t had anything to do with fire and was just mixed up with other fire-figures (like Logi) with time, the same way Loki was mixed with Utgard-Loki as a “master of illusions”. 

This phenomenon of inversion can be summed up quite easily. In Greek mythology, we have TONS of secondary and tertiary deities who are basically personifications without any kind of legend or myth to them, uncharacterized allegories that sometimes are just a name appearing in a list of concept. In Norse mythology, you have tons of secondary and tertiary deities without myths or legends, who are just names in a list - but this time, we have their names, we have a basic characterization, we know who they are, and the problem is that we don’t know what they are supposed to represent. You have tons of small Norse gods about whom people keep asking and searching “What did they embody? What did they personify?”. The character without the personification. 

You know, an interesting tumblr transformation that's happened gradually, and which I've seen no one talk about: ask-culture has essentially dropped off to nothing.

By which I mean, asks used to be WAY more of the tumblr economy. They used to be more common to send, and receive, and see. They were integral to the collaborative, forum-like behavior of old tumblr communities, not even to speak on the HUGE number of ask-blogs that used to exist to only be interacted with in ask-form.

I'm not saying this in a vying-for-attention way but instead in an observational way: I used to get way way more asks in like 2015, even with a fraction of my follower count. I wonder if it's due to the homogenization of social media sites? There's a lot more of this divide between "content creator" and "consumer" instead of just a bunch of peer blogs who would talk to each other. "Asks" aren't really a thing on twitter, are they? And as I understand it, the closest thing to an "ask" on instagram or tiktok would be a creator screenshotting some comment and responding to it in a new reel or video or whatever those content mediums are. Are asks just too tumblr-specific? Is that aspect of the site culture dying out as more and more people converge to using all their social media sites in the same way?

Anakin Skywalker as a tragic hero

To be an Anakin apologist about it haha there are a lot of Takes recently because of the new show that seem to be missing an important POV about his role in Star Wars. Everyone's interpretation is valid but this is another to consider! Re: the concept of Fate in Star Wars as a genre of Tragedy.

Anakin was a demi-god and literal agent of the Force's Will (as per the actual narrative he was conceived from the Force to fulfill a prophecy). He was tortured by his tragic fate to enact the Prophecy (balance the Force). This prophecy ended up being predictably misinterpreted by the Jedi (hence the Tragedy genre) to mean "end the Sith" when it ended up meaning "end the Sith & the Jedi". This was Yoda's entire realization in RotS and why he painfully & memorably admits, "Failed, I have." So caught up was the Council in attachment to the war's outcome, to being warriors, to the Senate's will, to ending the Sith, that the Jedi forgot their principles.

The Sith, naturally, also failed. They manipulated and groomed Anakin from childhood - proving their evil.

Anakin was DESTINED to fall no matter what he tried (hence the genre of Tragedy), because he was DESTINED to enact the prophecy based off the actions of the Galaxy itself & Republic & Sith.

Anakin Skywalker is a tragic hero because his "heroic" destiny was to be an antagonist - to both the Jedi and the Sith until the Force was balanced, which, ultimately, was something the Force~ determined to be a necessary action - not him.

Anakin both is and isn't the Force, Anakin both is and isn't Vader. Microcosmically he has a crisis of personality, but macrocosmically his personality struggle is representative of the Force's response to the actions of the Galaxy at large. He is presented narratively as a messianic figure. He is not entirely human and not entirely beholden to human concepts of morality. He is a reactionary gauge of the moral health of the Galaxy as surely as he is an individual - and this is something he struggles with immensely. His human soul struggles with his fate and the tragedies that befall him and handling them. He is also not entirely in charge of his own free will.

His own free will is actually secondary and although his actions are important because he propels the narrative, from this POV Star Wars is ultimately about the other characters' reactions to Anakin as an agent of fate - Anakin is essentially the Old Woman appearing at the Castle in Beauty and the Beast, and the Jedi, Sith, Galaxy, and his friends are the people tasked with letting him in from the cold.

They almost all fail this test and display the darkness of the Galaxy towards the Innocent: Anakin was enslaved as a child, his mother murdered, the so-called compassionate Light-wielding Jedi made no exceptions for him as a young boy, the Sith took advantage of and manipulated him, Padme & Obi-wan had their own issues and were unable to see him entirely for who he was etc etc. This isn't to say they were all bad or even bad people at all! Or that the Jedi were bad~. But they failed the test anyway.

From this literary POV: Anakin was a test from the Force. And the Galaxy failed. Yet, despite this, Anakin's human half still fought for them, he was desperate to be a Jedi & truly believed in them and even returned to be one after the Prophecy was fulfilled and he was finally free. He mourns Padme (even as Vader) and cannot truly ever let go of Obi-wan as his partner (because he doesn't want to). His human half also burned for 20 years in the purgatory sarcophagus of Vader (it needed to "pay" for the human evil he took to enact the Prophecy).

Anakin wept when destroying the Temple and falling to the Dark. He knew becoming Vader would bring pain and suffering. He did not want to fall. Yes, he made choices that ensured he would because of his circumstances, but the tragedy is any of his choices would have lead him there. He was meant to fall in both the eyes of the Sith and Jedi, and to cast the Force's will upon them. This is why he was allowed to be a Force Ghost and reunited in everlasting life with Obi-wan. Because he was a tragic hero not a true villain.

Anakin Skywalker is a tragic hero who was in fact a slave his entire life. He is a tragic hero because his actions taken as per destiny (The Force at work) were engineered to cast him as a villain. No, he wasn't "evil" and yup... one could even argue... neither was Vader as a demi-god (though of course he commited evil). Anakin/Vader was merely an, sometimes unwilling, sometimes willing, always-tortured agent of the Force. One to be helped (Anakin) or defeated (Vader) as per the Force's test for the Galaxy.

This isn't anti-Jedi, either! Anakin loved the Jedi. You could argue importantly that the Force wanted the Jedi to prove themselves post destruction. It wanted the Galaxy to stop fighting one another (the War!) and focus on the true evil right under their nose (the Sith). It even gave them a target... Vader. One who stole their former future (symbolized by the younglings). And was then regifted as a second chance by Luke and Leia (younglings who represented a new Senate and Jedi Order) by Anakin.

For these reasons Anakin Skywalker is a tragic hero. He is not a villain and was not inherently evil, his destiny, one he fought valiantly against, was tragically to be an antagonist.

This meta isn't to say other's interpretations of Anakin's fall are wrong. They are all valid and fascinating (and often complement one another) - but this is simply another to add to the pile. One to consider when looking at the lore of Star Wars through the lens of the macrocosmic lens of "Fate" in a Tragedy.