Misconceptions - Tumblr Posts

History memes #22

Never actually watched merlin BBC and just skipped to the fanfiction and I genuinely thought lancelot was black for like hundreds of fics before I saw a picture of him on Tumblr? After some soul searching I've realized it's cause Lancelot was black in once upon a time and i just connected connections that don't exist hdosjsosjd he's still pretty! But boy he looks nothing like my imagination

July for Loki using 30 Days of Deity Devotion prompts, Day 9 • Common mistakes about Loki

Countless. So here are just a few I've heard myself.

•He's evil, "the Norse Satan" (as if Satan was originally evil himself, but that's another story). False. No deity is good or evil, but I guess it's easier to separate rather than consider the whole of reality.

•He's the bad boy of Ásgarðr, rebel without a cause, always messing around. False. He definitely knows how to create Chaos, and enjoys it from time to time, but he mostly loves to travel the Nine Worlds and take good care of his family and his people.

•He's dangerous to "work with". May be true, it wholly depends on your attitude - but isn't that so for any spirit/entity/deity?

•He will destroy your life. False. He will destroy what needs to be burnt, only to let what really matters grow free. That may include a huge part of the false truths you built around and for yourself. but would you rather live in constant denial of who you are?

•He will lie to you. Absolutely false. He will tear you apart with the hardest truths you never had the courage to face, he'll guide you and show you how to deal with them, and you'll be finally free.

•His devotees are dangerous people. Well. If I may say so myself. Just joking! Us lokeans generally tend to be respectful and inclusive people. You can always find the occasional arsehole, as everywher; but maybe because most of us experienced hard times in our lives, we tend to be compassionate towards others. Of course, Loki also teaches us not to take bullshit from anyone, so if you consider growing tired of your unfairness being a bad person, then yes, a lokean would probably very bad for you.

Art: Loki is scheming the murder of Baldr by joan789 on DeviantArt

July for Loki using 30 Days of Deity Devotion prompts, Day 27 • Worst misconception about Loki that you have encountered

Too many to count! xD

What troubles me the most is probably the superficiality with which some describe him, reducing him to either a merely evil entity, or to the court jester of Ásgarðr. Yes, he can be mischievous; yes, he can be a bad guy; yes, he can be a jokester; but he has MANY faces, and some of those to me are more prominent than those he’s most (in)famous for. He's fun, he's loving, he's wise, he's a warrior in many ways… There's a lot to discover about Loki, and I wish people would stop misjudging him - or maybe not. Maybe that’s the way it should be, after all. Maybe some are destined to stay on the surface of things, without ever going deeper.

Art: The Unlucky Family by Hellanim on DeviantArt

Terms related to "shipping" and their usage

How terms related to "shipping" are used within fandom spaces: the original meanings and how they've been twisted.

Proship

Proshipper

Anti(-shipper)

I want to briefly adress another BIG misconception about Greek gods that has (quite recently) been going on around the Internet. And it is again part due to the Percy Jackson TV show. I insist on the "TV show", because as we now know, the TV show made some changes to the book's original plotline when it came to the gods interacting with their children (like Athena's move with Echidna *cough cough*), and as a result here is what I have been hearing here and there.

"Yeah, well the Greek gods were all assholes, right, but what PJ REALLY got right was that they were especially assholes to their own children and the worst abusive parents ever".

... No?

In fact this is almost a counter-interpretation of Greek mythology, because in Greek myths and legends, the whole point was that, when a god was being an "asshole" as you say, they were an asshole to everybody... except their children. One of the reasons the Greek gods can look "bad" by modern standards is precisely because they had an habit of favorizing their own children, and taking care about them more than about other beings.

The most famous of these myths is of course Demeter's immense love and hyper-protection of Persephone - just look at the trials she went through to find her back after she disappeared.

Another famous example is how Poseidon turned on Odysseus and plagued him with curses and monsters for blinding his son - Polyphemus the cyclop (and the whole point here is that Poseidon favorized his son, despite his son being the actual criminal and monster in the case)

Ares, who was not one of the best gods, still went on an avenging mode every time his children were attacked, from the dragon slain by Cadmos to the rape of Alcippe.

There's how Apollo went berserk after the death of Asclepios. There's how Herakles had planned to be favorized by Fate since his birth thanks to Zeus, and how the entire reason Zeus inflicted on his wife the atrocious torture of hanging chained up by the sky was because he had enough of her constantly tormenting Herakles in the worst ways possible. Even Athena ended up taking care of Erichthonius as her own child despite her not being his true mother - showing that even the virgin, sexless, childless goddess has a mothering side to her.

It all goes back to Gaia, and how she keeps turning against Zeus for each time vanquishing her children - from the Titans, to the Giants, to Typhon - despite these children being again, bad news and even hurting Gaia herself. Another example of "primordial motherhood": Nyx shelters Hypnos from Zeus' wrath in the Iliad, and not even Zeus would dare anger such an elderly mother-goddess. And if we push beyond the boundaries of Greek mythology and into the very late Roman literature, we see this trend continues with Aphrodite's smothering-mothering of Eros during the Psyche legend.

A good lot of conflicts and feuds and problems in Greek mythology was precisely due to how much the gods loved their children, and how protective they were of them - with the problem that the god had the tendency to be blind to whether their children were good or evil, victims or criminals.

This is why, for example, Zeus and Hera's relationships to their children were especially important and unique in Greek myths, in the light of this god's tendency to favorize and spoil and protect their own children.

On Hera's case, her action of, for example, throwing Hephaistos into the sea at birth just because he is "ugly" is meant to come off as massively shocking. Remember that in a good bunch of Greek myths, Hera had a negative, evil, dangerous side to her, that popped up in various ways - from her jealous, vain, angry personality to how in some versions she literaly gave birth to Typhon... Unlike Zeus, who was the "ultimate father", Hera wasn't (in myths, I insist) seen as a postive mother, and was more of a mother-of-monsters avatar (after all, she did command a lot of Greek monsters), or an anti-mother (she was the one who prevented Leto from giving birth, a powerful symbol).

On the other side, Zeus was also seen regularly punishing or being very harsh to his children, but there was the secret to his character: Zeus had to act both as a father, and as a king. He embodied the all loving ancestor and the all powerful father, but he also had to act as the embodiment of law and of justice, and those two aspects of his personality clashed a lot. We see him punish his divine children regularly, but almost always because his role as the enforcer of the law primed over his role as a father - for example when he wanted to throw Apollo into Tartarus because he had caused a Cyclop genocide out of anger. But he still had this same "over-parenting" side as the other gods. Again, Herakles was one of his favorite children and he tried to arrange everything so that he could have the greatest life ever - but his official side as the "political" and "civilization" god caught up to him when Hera tricked him into swearing away the gifts he had intended for Herakles. Despite Zeus' immense love for his son, his oath and the law he embodies took over and prevented him from sheltering Herakles from Hera's hatred. The most revealing case of this "father vs king" aspect of Zeus' personality comes from the Iliad: it is the death of Saperdon.

When Zeus looks upon the Trojan War and sees that his son will soon die, he is very heavily tempted from interfering. He explicitely wishes to save him, and to change the scales of fate to avoid his impending death (because remember in the Iliad Zeus was still the god of fate who literaly weighed humans' destinities in his scale). That's his "father" side showing up. But then Hera, who is by his side, who is his queen and thus his "political" side, reminds him of his duty as a king and of his role as ultimate judge of the world and ruler of the gods. She points out he would break the very own law he imposed of not interfering with the mortal conflict. She reminds him that, as the setter of examples, if he saved Sarpedon, he would create a precedent and other gods could also start saving their own children from the war. She reminds him that he has a role as the god of law and fate, and that he can't allow his personal feelings to interfere in the matter, else he would be unfair and unjust. And thus, Zeus resignates himself to let his son die before his eyes - but he still shows his immense love for him by both sending a shower of blood as a sign of his grief, and then ordering Apollo, Hypnos and Thanatos in person to carry Sarpedon's corpse away (predating future legends about great kings and heroes taken into the afterlife by supernatural figures, like Arthur collected by Morgan and the ladies of Avalon).

In conclusion: having the gods act as if they were all bad, abusive, absent parents not getting involved in their children's life or not caring about them is actually going against what the mythology originally said in terms of characterization. The untold rule of Greek mythology was that, if gods were bad parents, it would be because they were too loving, too protective, too smothering, too spoiling, interfering too much. Not the other way around - unless you were Hera, of course. Meanwhile, having the gods act as "assholes" and bullies towards OTHER GODS' children, now that would be accurate to Greek mythology (this is the very basis of Hera's cycle of legends as a persecuting goddess). But the gods usually stuck by the side of their own children - a bit like how in a school's football or soccer game the parents end up fighting each other because of what their children did or did not do in the game.

To clear up some common misconceptions:

Weird is good. Strange is bad.

Smart is how much you know, intelligent is what you do with it.

Sympathy is having been there; empathy is feeling it without having been there; apathy is not feeling at all.

Bravery is choosing not to be afraid, courage is being afraid and doing it anyway.

This Monday is the upcoming Monday; next Monday is the one after that.

Hearing is sound passing into your ear. Listening is thinking about what the sound means.

Prompt 41

A mage (yes I know I love making mage villains of the week, but if they didn't want me to make them all the time, they shouldn't be so fun and full of opportunities) puts a spell on Geralt while he's on a hunt. He can only speak lies / the complete opposite of what he feels or means to say, and the only way to break the spell is to reveal his darkest secret. This is all well and good and easily fixable, presumably. The best part is Jaskier has caught on near immediately to what the curse is, and is able to translate all of Geralt's lies and antonyms. "I don't need more supplies for potions." "We'll go looking for a greenhouse or whatever you need, then." "I hate this song." "Why thank you, Geralt! How lovely to know that opinion is a lie!" "Can I braid your hair again?" "Never." "Perfect!~" Except for the times he pretends to forget the curse's existence. "Feed Roach all the apples you want." "Oh, I shall! Thank you for the permission!" He did not give permission. Geralt just deals with the curse for a month or two, before being fed up and deciding to just trust the mage's so-called cure for the curse, and says his darkest secret. That he's in love with Jaskier. However, he's neglected to find a way to explain the cure to Jaskier, and now Jaskier just assumes he's heard another lie / complete opposite. Jaskier is heartbroken, assuming Geralt must dislike him at the least, and hate him at the worst, and suddenly all those teasing comments over the years are seen in a new worrying light. I mean, Geralt, cursed to say the exact opposite of what he means telling Jaskier that he loves him? Jaskier races away from their shared room and gets absolutely wasted in a tavern all the way across town. Geralt paces and panics alone in their shared room for a few hours before going and returning his bard back home. He now has to spend the entire night internally-writing and rehearsing his big explanation speech and apologize to his bard for the miscommunication.

Prompt 66

Geralt is sure the bard he's started traveling with is a monster. I mean, an inhumanely beautiful young man with an inhumanely wonderful voice, and an inhumanely positive outlook on everything involved in Geralt's life? Bullshit. And he stayed. Even after the incident with the elves, where he had sad little puppy eyes - that were much too heartwrenching to not be magic - after his lute was smashed. Sure, he got a new and better lute, but surely he'd wanna leave by now.

Geralt starts testing. An "accidental" graze of silver against the bard's skin. Too much garlic on their food. A circle of salt. Fucking anything that reveals what he is! Jaskier, the human, is endeared endlessly with Geralt's shenanigans. How paranoid the poor witcher must be, if he keeps checking to make sure Jaskier hasn't been replaced with a monstrous lookalike in the night!

Things people said to me after finding out that I am romanian

1. "Eww, you filthy gypsy?"

"Romanian" and "roma/romani" people are two different things. Romanians are descendants of romans and dacians. Romani people are an ethnic group of Indo-Aryan origin. It's like confusing indians with native americans.

Now, there are people would use the fact that Romania is the country with the most romani people as an argument. And while this is true, they still represent only 3% of our population. Furthermore, not all of them are thieves or beggars, and not all of them are aggressive as many guys would like to believe. There's a more complex image of this minority, including romani palaces, well-defined rules, and traditions.

2. "Then why don't you have an italian accent?"

Romanian is a country from eastern Europe. It has nothing to do with Rome.

3. "Is Romania in Africa?"

Again, eastern Europe.

4. "Do you speak russian?"

There's this misconception that Romania is a slavic country, due to the fact that its neighbors are all slavic countries, and because Romania was a Communist State for almost 50 years during the previous century. However, as I said, romanians are the descendants of romans and dacians, and romanian is a latin language.

5. "Do you guys have electricity there?"

*face slap*

6. "When was the last time when you took a shower?"

Yes, there are also people who believe that we do not wash ourselves.

7. "Mind your eye, she's gonna steal your wallet!"

A common stereotype is that romanian are thieves.

8. "Are you a vampire?"

Ironically, despite the fact that the most common stereotype about our country involves Dracula, there are no vampires in our folklore and Bram Stoker included a lot of errors in his novel. The closest thing to vampires that we have is a demon called "strigoi".

9. "Do you know any hooker? I'm free this night."

Due to the fact that in Romania prostitution still isn't legalized, there were a lot of girls and women from this country who were trafficked and forced to prostitute themselves in different places. And because of that, there are a lot of people outside of our country who believe that romanian women are harlots.

One of my relatives used to work as a waiter at a restaurant from Belgium, and she simply told me that she was afraid at one point to say where she's from purely because of this type of questions. Worst part is that the first man who asked her to sleep with him was a jewish priest.