#in sources

[something-in-the-seas]

Why I think Sol Invictus might actually be the overarching villain of the next saga (I blame Valhalla for this)

⭐️ Valhalla's release date being two weeks before Christmas and being described by so many as an "early Christmas present." Listen, we have never had anything in God of War released around Christmas before. Ever. And the release dates of these games always tie into mythology in some way: the Greek games releasing in March ties back to Mars, Ragnarok's release date of Wednesday ties back to Wednesday being Odin's day, even Valhalla coming out on a Tuesday is a reference to Tyr.

So, why is Christmas so important than? Well, December 25th, is the date of Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, the Birth of the Unconquerable Sun. It's a commonly held theory that the Early Church appropriated the date to make it easier to integrate Roman converts.

⭐️ Getting back to Christianity... we know it's confirmed in the God of War universe, we know the original ending of the Greek saga was going to be Kratos becoming one of the Three Wisemen. No way in hell are they touching Christianity with a ten foot pole, but that doesn't mean monotheism isn't going to be addressed. Jesus was drawn as Sol Invictus in Ancient Roman art, the depiction of Jesus having a halo came from Helios, Psalm 104:3 describes God as having a chariot...

"Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters: who maketh the clouds his chariot: who walketh upon the wings of the wind." -Psalm 104: 3

Kratos isn't suplexing Jesus, but Sol Invictus could be a villain that is the closest we get to a Fallen Christ figure. All the Jesus parallels are right there:

Jesus refers to himself as "the light of the world" and goes on to say "whoever walks with me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life" (John 8:12). Not quite exactly the same thing as Kratos using Helios' head as a flashlight, but Kratos did use him to light his way through the darkness to ultimately beat Zeus. His light also lit up the entire Underworld. Greece cannot survive without him.

In some translations of the Bible, Jesus is described as being raised up from the realm of Hades. Chains of Olympus is heavily, heavily referenced in Valhalla and what is the plot? Raising the sun- Helios- up from the Underworld.

Jesus, particularly his resurrection, was associated with the Phoenix (we'll get into that later).

Later on in the medieval era, Jesus would be described as descending into Hell before rising from the dead, which if the theory that the Roman gods are revived Olympians... where does Kratos take the head of Helios? Tartarus, the equivalent to Hell. In popular culture, Hell is usually always depicted as fire and brimstone, going off of Dante's Inferno and this passage of Revelation describing damned souls being thrown into a lake of fire. What seemingly has rivers of fire? Tartarus in God of War 3.

⭐️ We don't know what Athena's plan is, in fact, we don't know what the hell is going on with Athena at all. All we know is that she changed from wanting to save Olympus to being ready to sacrifice her entire family for the chance to rule on her own in a second. Monotheism. It could be just greed, but that's also so not Athena? I think her being a villain can work: I can believe ascending to a higher plan has changed her and that her priority is her new Ascended Council, but what do they want exactly? They definitely were involved with Odin's mask and the rift, they want Kratos to 'fulfill his destiny,' and then what?

⭐️ We know Rome exists in the God of War universe: the Norns speak Latin. While Athena/Minerva was still an important deity to the Romans (even if Ovid seemed to despise her), a lot of her significance as a god of war/strategy went to Ares/Mars and Bellona. Minerva was primarily a goddess of wisdom and crafts and only became a war goddess later on.

Minerva has an interesting history when it comes to Rome's push towards sun worship. Before Aurelian revived the cult of Sol Invictus, Emperor Elagabalus stripped Jupiter of his position as King of the Gods in order to give the title to the Syrian sun god, Elagabalus (Heliogabalus) instead. The Romans were already pissed, but the cherry on top was Elagabalus moving a statue of Athena/Minerva from the Temple of Vesta to be by Elagabalus' stone in a symbolic marriage that fell through after backlash.

There are theories that Sol Invictus is a combination of Elagabalus and Sol Indiges (the traditional Roman god of the sun), or that Sol Invictus was always Sol Indiges. It's hard to find information because most ancient writers were very, very bias and so much was lost over thousands of years. Anyway, a storyline of Sol Invictus over throwing Jupiter and having a connection to Minerva/Athena has precedence.

⭐️ Finally, there's the most damning piece of evidence... this line right here: "You think I'm afraid of a little fire? Don't threaten me with a good time, Kratos. Maybe I'll be infused with power and achieve my final form."

You know what mythological animal is infused with power and revived by fire? The phoenix. It's canonly seen in God of War 2 and after Kratos stabs himself with the Blade of Olympus in 3, the post credit scene has his blood seeping into a large engraving of a phoenix.

You know what the phoenix is also heavily associated with? The sun. Or, the God of the Sun. In Egyptian mythology, where the Phoenix originates, it's name is the Benu and instead of being an eagle or peacock, it's appearance is that of a heron. It's believed to be the ba (part of the soul) of Ra, but it's also associated with Atum and Osiris. There was significant reverence for the Benu at the Temple of Ra in the Egyptian city of Iunu, its Greek name being Heliopolis, "the City of the Sun." The Greeks took the concept of the Benu and associated their phoenix with Helios such as Herodotus when he first introduced the concept of the phoenix to the Greeks:

"There is another sacred bird, too, whose name is Phoinix (Phoenix). I myself have never seen it, only pictures of it; for the bird seldom comes into Aigyptos (Egypt) : once in five hundred years, as the people of Heliopolis say. It is said that the Phoinix comes when his father dies. If the picture truly shows his size and appearance, his plumage is partly golden and partly red. He is most like an eagle in shape and size. What they say this bird manages to do is incredible to me. Flying from Arabia to the temple of the Helios (the Sun), they say, he conveys his father encased in myrrh and buries him at the temple of Helios [i.e. in the temple of the Egyptian god Ra]. This is how he conveys him: he first molds an egg of myrrh as heavy as he can carry, then tries lifting it, and when he has tried it, he then hollows out the egg and puts his father into it, and plasters over with more myrrh the hollow of the egg into which he has put his father, which is the same in weight with his father lying in it, and he conveys him encased to the temple of the Sun in Aigyptos (Egypt). This is what they say this bird does." - Herodotus, Histories 2. 73 (trans. Godley) (Greek historian C5th B.C.)

Rome also associated itself as being like a Phoenix and had images of them on their coins. The phoenix is immortal, much like how the Romans envisioned their empire, constantly going through a cycle of death and rebirth. Maybe I'm just becoming Charlie Kelly but... idk... I feel like SSM is onto something.

#god of war #god of war ragnarok #god of war spoilers #kratos #helios gow #athena gow #minerva gow #sol invictus #tw sa mention #in sources #tw blo0d #religious mention

[bookshelfdreams]

x

#please update your memes people #also forgot to add the source shame on me

[cadaverkeys]

You guys rlly don't realise how much knowledge is still not committed to the internet. I find books all the time with stuff that is impossible to find through a search engine- most people do not put their magnum opus research online for free and the more niche a skill is the less likely you are to have people who will leak those books online. (Nevermind all the books written prior to the internet that have knowledge that is not considered "relevant" enough to digitise).

Whenever people say that we r growing up with all the world's knowledge at our fingertips...it's not necessarily true. Is the amount of knowledge online potentially infinite? Yes. Is it all knowledge? No. You will be surprised at the niche things you can discover at a local archive or library.

#rambles #if you are a person who is into delicate skills #like lacemaking or printing or sewing #you will know fair well just how non expansive the knowledge online is in comparison to written guides from like the 50s #there was a time where at least one person in the household had to know a constructive skill #but in the modern day there is just less ans less demands for comprehensive guides #library propaganda #im stuck doing an essay rn but bc i have covid i cant go to the library and its totally fucked me #i want to source a lot of the stuff i read irl but i just cant go and get it and theres no online ver

[spooksier]

passages that make you whisper "oh my god"

#text! #working on a paper abt the degradation of the line between real/unreal in modern society and this one paragraph blew my MIND #like it literally tied all of my other sources together #also this whole paper is about how sex has disappeared from american media so if ur interested in that i highly recommend it

[inktail]

reblog for the most chaos PC we can manage

#it is over; i am free #jk this has been a constant source of joy all week and I'm going to miss it

[cemeterything]

obviously people steal things from other people it's one of the oldest tricks in the book but it still always surprises me to learn that people plagiarise because my introduction to the concept was basically being told that if i ever plagiarised anything i would be executed by firing squad and my head would be removed and displayed on a spike outside the walls of the hallowed academic institution i was attending as a warning to others

#🐉 #like they were not fucking around they were like you will be BLACKLISTED we will EXILE you there may be FINANCIAL RESTITUTION OWED #if our plagiarism software detects anything suspicious we will FLAY YOU ALIVE IN THE TOWN SQUARE #i still wake up in a cold sweat sometimes wondering if i cited my sources correctly

[antdays]

my dealer: got some straight gas 🔥😛 this strain is called "four hour video essay about plagiarism" 😳 you'll be zonked out of your gourd💯

me: yeah whatever. i don't feel shit.

5 minutes later: dude i swear i just saw brian deer say that exact sentence before

my buddy hbomberguy, pacing: james somerton is lying to us

#in the spirit of the new hbomberguy video: the original source of this meme seems to be a tweet by user @sabatonfan69 #which i found through tumblr user @thesituation #hbomberguy

[oocsydney]

hbomberguy highlighting all of the parts where james somerton plagiarized from other queer creators:

#hbomberguy #james somerton #literally the only parts james somerton wrote on his own were the misogynist ones #and it's disgusting to think that james was likely setting up for his script writer to take the fall for all of the plagiarism #UPDATE: apparently the script writer ALSO didn't do any research into what James wrote in his scripts. man. (source: Todd in the Shadows) #todd in the shadows

[defilerwyrm]

Growth capitalism is a deranged fantasy for lunatics.

Year 1, your business makes a million dollars in profit. Great start!

Year 2, you make another million. Oh no! Your business is failing because you didn't make more than last year!

Okay, say year 2 you make $2 mil. Now you're profitable!

Then year 3 you make $3 mil. Oh no! Your business is failing! But wait, you made more money than last year right? Sure, but you didn't make ENOUGH more than last year so actually your business is actively tanking! Time to sell off shares and dismantle it for parts! You should have made $4 mil in profit to be profitable, you fool!

If you're not making more money every year by an ever-increasing exponent, the business is failing!

Absolute degenerate LUNACY

#eat the rich #fuck capitalism #capitalists make great mulch #they're a sustainable and eco-friendly source of pig feed and fertilizer #blog together queue alone

[coolxatu]

she allegoried on my cave til i [JOKE PENDING]

#guys stop reblogging this from the source post the other version has the punchline youre leaving out the funny #ok jokes on you guys reblogging this from the source actually reinforces the original punchline #welcome to cave allegory 2 electric boogaloo

[endusviolence]

Rowling isn't denying holocaust. She just pointed out that burning of transgender health books is a lie as that form of cosmetic surgery didn't exist. But of course you knew that already, didn't you?

I was thinking I'd probably see one of you! You're wrong :) Let's review the history a bit, shall we?

In this case, what we're talking about is the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, or in English, The Institute of Sexology. This Institute was founded and headed by a gay Jewish sexologist named Magnus Hirschfeld. It was founded in July of 1919 as the first sexology research clinic in the world, and was run as a private, non-profit clinic. Hirschfeld and the researchers who worked there would give out consultations, medical advice, and even treatments for free to their poorer clientele, as well as give thousands of lectures and build a unique library full of books on gender, sexuality, and eroticism. Of course, being a gay man, Hirschfeld focused a lot on the gay community and proving that homosexuality was natural and could not be "cured".

Hirschfeld was unique in his time because he believed that nobody's gender was either one or the other. Rather, he contended that everyone is a mixture of both male and female, with every individual having their own unique mix of traits.

This leads into the Institute's work with transgender patients. Hirschfeld was actually the one to coin the term "transsexual" in 1923, though this word didn't become popular phrasing until 30 years later when Harry Benjamin began expanding his research (I'll just be shortening it to trans for this brief overview.) For the Institute, their revolutionary work with gay men eventually began to attract other members of the LGBTA+, including of course trans people.

Contrary to what Anon says, sex reassignment surgery was first tested in 1912. It'd already being used on humans throughout Europe during the 1920's by the time a doctor at the Institute named Ludwig Levy-Lenz began performing it on patients in 1931. Hirschfeld was at first opposed, but he came around quickly because it lowered the rate of suicide among their trans patients. Not only was reassignment performed at the Institute, but both facial feminization and facial masculization surgery were also done.

The Institute employed some of these patients, gave them therapy to help with other issues, even gave some of the mentioned surgeries for free to this who could not afford it! They spoke out on their behalf to the public, even getting Berlin police to help them create "transvestite passes" to allow people to dress however they wanted without the threat of being arrested. They worked together to fight the law, including trying to strike down Paragraph 175, which made it illegal to be homosexual. The picture below is from their holiday party, Magnus Hirschfeld being the gentleman on the right with the fabulous mustache. Many of the other people in this photo are transgender.

[Image ID: A black and white photo of a group of people. Some are smiling at the camera, others have serious expressions. Either way, they all seem to be happy. On the right side, an older gentleman in glasses- Magnus Hirschfeld- is sitting. He has short hair and a bushy mustache. He is resting one hand on the shoulder of the person in front of him. His other hand is being held by a person to his left. Another person to his right is holding his shoulder.]

There was always push back against the Institute, especially from conservatives who saw all of this as a bad thing. But conservatism can't stop progress without destroying it. They weren't willing to go that far for a good while. It all ended in March of 1933, when a new Chancellor was elected. The Nazis did not like homosexuals for several reasons. Chief among them, we break the boundaries of "normal" society. Shortly after the election, on May 6th, the book burnings began. The Jewish, gay, and obviously liberal Magnus Hirschfeld and his library of boundary-breaking literature was one of the very first targets. Thankfully, Hirschfeld was spared by virtue of being in Paris at the time (he would die in 1935, before the Nazis were able to invade France). His library wasn't so lucky.

This famous picture of the book burnings was taken after the Institute of Sexology had been raided. That's their books. Literature on so much about sexuality, eroticism, and gender, yes including their new work on trans people. This is the trans community's Alexandria. We're incredibly lucky that enough of it survived for Harry Benjamin and everyone who came after him was able to build on the Institute's work.

[Image ID: A black and white photo of the May Nazi book burning of the Institute of Sexology's library. A soldier, back facing the camera, is throwing a stack of books into the fire. In the background of the right side, a crowd is watching.]

As the Holocaust went on, the homosexuals of Germany became a targeted group. This did include transgender people, no matter what you say. To deny this reality is Holocaust denial. JK Rowling and everyone else who tries to pretend like this isn't reality is participating in that evil. You're agreeing with the Nazis.

But of course, you knew that already, didn't you?

Edit: Added image IDs. I apologize to those using screen readers for forgetting them. Please reblog this version instead.

#transgender #trans history #transsexual #transphobia #Magnus Hirschfeld #holocaust #holocaust denial #book burning #j.k. rowling #jk rowling #just in case you missed what i mean by all this: go fuck yourself anon :) #trans people have always existed #and we will always exist #if you really wanna pick a fight with me over well-documented history then you better bring in some sources to back your shit #queer history #queer #lgbt+ #lgbta+ #lgbt #lgbt history #edit: i finally got around to those damn image IDs. i am so very sorry for totally forgetting that's my bimbo moment of the month #also real quick i thought about adding an image of the actual building but the only one i can find has a Nazi parade in front of it #it was taken the day of the book burning raid and honestly if i were to include it then i'd add it to the first few paragraphs #and i think the story's better told when you uphold the hope Magnus Hirschfeld and all the researchers he worked with had #also keeps being brought up: yes Hirschfeld was a eugenicist. it was a popular belief set that was only discredited after WW2 #Hirschfeld died in 1935. he literally didn't live long enough to see science turn against those beliefs and practices #considering how he changed his mind on transitions i like to think he would've changed his mind on eugenics too if he'd lived

[spitblaze]

considering how many transmascs were legitimately way angrier BEFORE starting T and have since calmed down significantly have we perhaps considered that maybe the reason so many cis dudes are angry and aggressive isn't because of testosterone but maybe. like. personal issues. unmet needs. a social climate that teaches them that there are only like three acceptable emotional outlets for men max and one of them is being angry and shouting

#spitblaze says things #source: i got angry SO easily before i started t #i had jokes about the list of things you could say to me that would make me rant and rave in a fury #i still have things that piss me off but im not like. to that degree #doin numbers

[thepioden]

I see your "Laios is trans" but that dude is THE most apathetically agender person on the planet. Laios does not have time for gender. Laios does not even HAVE a gender identity, he removed it to make room for more Monster Facts.

#source: I too am autistic and uninstalled Gender to make room for more Special Interest

[exoflash]

a concerning amount of witchblr will be like "um actually new years was stolen by europeans from the ancient god scroobus mcdoobus" and then you actually try to research scroobus mcdoobus and it turns out he was invented in the 1940s by a conspiracy theorist who powdered every meal with ketamine and thinks that queer people are reincarnated fish

#brightts ramblings #BEFORE I GET ATTACKED: THIS IS NOT AN ANTI-WITCH OR ANTI-PAGAN POST #im just literally begging witchblr and paganblr(?) to study history from proper sources #so you don't accidentally end up repeating misinfo or even outright bigoted info without realizing #you are not immune to propaganda! #this post is specifically ab new agey stuff like starseeds #but a lot of other stuff fits into this as well ie 'blessed be' #for further context i am not a witch or pagan myself but i DO study the occult/occult history #religion #spirituality #history

[zytes]

this manatee looks like it’s in a skyrim loading screen

#misc #I encourage anyone dyslexic to try rotating him in your mind. I can’t do that; which is why I’m asking you to. #also: a bunch of tags are surprised this isn’t ‘shopped #it’s the lighting. backlit by the sun (which is diffused through the water) but also forelit artificially #the artificial light - a flash pack or something - casts a hard shadow under the creatures arm #which normally wouldn’t be possible if backlit by the SUN; you’d see a less-hard/more-fragmented shadow above water #as light sources ‘compete’ in a sense - and since there aren’t any light sources which can outshine the literal sun #it looks a bit weird when the darkest shadow is being cast from any other origin point - which is what’s essentially happening here #I don’t know the mechanics of how light travels through water; but I know the effect is substantial even with relatively short distances #also: it’s been balanced and color corrected by the author of the photo - who made deliberate choices to bring out the full potential #so it’s not like it’s a fresh and untouched export #but the kind of ‘tacked on’ appearance of the creature is a result of the lighting conditions within the image

[adobe-outdesign]

recently I discovered that Kawayoo, one of my all-time favorite Pokemon TCG artists, has some art of Loudred floating around and it's the best thing I've ever seen

#pokemon #pkmn #pokemon cards #pokemon tcg #loudred #meloetta #outdesign posts things #unfortunately I can't find the exact source because it's presumably in Japanese #I think it might've been posted to twitter by kawayoo originally but I don't have a twitter to verify that #it's def his art though I know that much #UPDATE: source link has been added