#or maybe its not that common and the teenagers we're actually following are just living the most fucked up lives ever. i dotn know

[sonknuxadow]

you know i do wonder how many sonic characters actually have living parents. like knuckles is the last of his kind so obviously his parents arent around anymore. both guys who could be considered shadows dads are 100 percent confirmed dead. sonic is canonically an orphan im pretty sure. and on the other side of the coin cream is like the only character in the game cast who has a living parent we actually see onscreen. but what about everyone else i dont think theres a straight answer for any other character. other than rouge's mom being mentioned a couple times i Guess but we dont even know anything about her or if shes still alive just that she existed at some point. are these kids constantly putting themselves in danger because they dont have parents around to stop them or because their parents just dont care

#like what about tails. im guessing he didnt have any sort of family he was attached to if he left to be with sonic so quickly #but that doesnt really mean he didnt have parents at all. maybe he had parents and they just sucked i dont know #what about amy. what if she had parents this whole time we just never see them. #what about blaze. considering shes a princess id assume she was born into that role #but i dont know if her parents are ever actually mentioned #maybe theyre dead and there was no one else to take on their role and thats why blaze has so much responsibility at such a young age? #silver . he was born in a wet cardboard box all alone i cant really imagine him hvaing parents sorry #considering charmy is 6 and living with vector. an adult whos obviously not his biological dad. #i feel like something probably happened to charmys parents #espio i dont really question as much #becuase it feels very common in the sonic universe for teenagers to have more freedom than would be expected in real life #or maybe its not that common and the teenagers we're actually following are just living the most fucked up lives ever. i dotn know #but either way. espio where are your parents buddy. are they still alive. vector where are YOUR parents are they still alive #i dont know if i actually want canon explanations for all this though #because its kinda fun not knowing every detail about every characters life and being able to speculate and insert your headcanons n stuff #to be clear im talking about game canon #i know stuff like archie sonic and the sonic movies and the 90s cartoons will sometimes give characters new family members #or talk about their family situation even if the games dont say anything about that sort of thing

[heavensenthearty]

Criticism of something is also bad. It won't change anything, there will just be more ship wars

... A, I think I have proved so far that I can be a patient person when needed — (throughout high school, my classmates used to chant "Bless be your patience" whenever they saw me walk by) — but this kind of asks push real close to my limit.

Here in Venezuela, we have a common belief of how happy life must be for those who don't use critical thinking. Because it's an easy life, but that doesn't make it a good one. I've already mentioned Venezuelans have flaws, but there is one (☝🏽) thing we're damn good at: 👏🏽 learning 👏🏽 from 👏🏽 past 👏🏽 mistakes. Let them be our own mistakes or the ones of the others.

You know what criticism is used for? For making improvements.

General improvements.

Sure, it probably won't solve anything about the subject or issue at hand, but it will avoid the current mistakes to be made in the future.

You want to prove that fandom culture isn't only a bunch of horny teenage girls writing self-insert smut? That fanfiction is a valid form of literature and source of entertainment? That there are actual messages to grasp from fiction?

Well, like I always say, I hate to break it to you, but you need arguments for proving all of that. Which requires analysis, which requires critical thinking. And that isn't going to come from not thinking things through.

Moreover, people needs to be critic to write, and draw, and for creating basically all fandom content that you — (general you) — enjoy so much.

You know what happens when people immerses in media without acknowledging its faults? Things like Fate (Netflix's Winx Club reboot) happen. Or worse: things like The Last Airbender live-action movie happen.

And if this is a personal distaste against my way of enjoying fandom culture, you don't have to like it. The same way you don't have to keep following me.

I'm sorry, A. Maybe you'd have gotten an answer more fitting to your taste from someone who wasn't raised with such an analytical mentality. My bad!

#fiction writing #writing #fandom #criticism #angel answers 🤍

[millennialincantations]

Hexing the Moon is Not a Thing

I have been hesitant to weigh in on the on the controversy surrounding the rumors that witches are out there hexing the Fae and the moon, but as this story is making its way into national news media, I feel that silence is no longer appropriate. I am aware that people reading this are likely to disagree with me, or perhaps even become offended by my take on the situation, but I am willing to take that risk in an attempt to be a voice of reason.

The gist of this story is that allegedly groups of neophyte witches are organizing on the social media platform TikTok and attempting to cast harmful spells on the Fae and the moon, the actual moon orbiting the Earth, and allegedly the sun is next. I was very deliberate in calling this a rumor in my opening statement. After a lot of research, I have been unable to find a lot of evidence that this is really going on. I've managed to find two TikTok users claiming to be hexing the moon, both with only around 1000 followers, and both of them have posted videos that are very clearly jokes and/or trolling. And I'll be honest, they were kind of funny.

I'm open to any contradicting evidence anyone is willing to provide me, but at this point I believe that this alleged group of witches hexing the Fae and the moon is nothing more than a rumor, a prank, or an internet troll scheme that has been blown completely out of proportion. I have seen so many angry reactions to the idea that this may be happening and simply not enough proof to believe it is actually happening. Did the rumor originate from an actual event? Probably. Is there a kernel of truth here? Maybe. Is there a widespread conspiracy of witches hexing mythological creatures and celestial bodies? Doubt it.

The story seemed to explode when a Twitter user claimed that these hexes were occurring and their tweet went viral. I've read the entire tweet, and while it was heavily laden with definitions and dire consequences, what it lacked was a shred of evidence, a single source, or any clue as to where someone might look to see proof of these hexes and this community of young maleficars. However in spite of this, it created a wave of anger and panic that has spread across all social media platforms and inspired many witches to create some very emotional responses.

Here is why I have a problem with all of this. Reactionary emotional responses, especially ones of anger, based on baseless rumors, have a tendency to make us all look foolish. And I sincerely feel that the global witch community is being made to look foolish right now. I will now thoroughly explain why.

I am going to begin with the obvious ageist and anti-novice dialogue this has inspired. I have purposefully avoided using the term “baby witch” until now, because I find it pretty offensive. I probably don't need to tell you that every story about this starts with a headline similar to “baby witches hex the moon.” “Baby witches” are the ones to blame, and “baby witches” are being vilified right now. In general, putting the word “baby” in front of another title serves to be diminutive, to express that while you and this person may share an identity, you are clearly superior to them. Using titles this way is infantilizing and demeaning. It suggests that while this person may be an adult, they are helpless, irrational, naive, stupid, and so on. There is nothing wrong with being a younger witch or a person who is new to the spiritual path of witchcraft. There is absolutely something wrong with taking a rumor as an excuse to release prejudicial venom against young and/or inexperienced people all across the internet.

Few of us were lucky enough to be born into witchcraft families. Many of us found witchcraft as a spiritual solace after escaping religious systems that oppressed us. Engaging in any kind of dialogue that makes witchcraft seem hostile to the young or new people who need it is simply not good form, and in my opinion, unethical. And let me remind any witches reading this that you most likely did or thought some pretty stupid things when you were new to witchcraft. I know I did.

Calling the subjects of this rumor “TikTok witches” serves nearly the same purpose as calling them “baby witches.” It's well known that as a newer and more complicated platform, TikTok is most popular with younger and more tech savvy users. Referring to someone as a “TikTok witch” not only makes an assumption about their age and level of experience, but also serves to denigrate their practice into an aesthetic rather than an identity. I am very active in the Facebook witch community, but I would never describe myself as a “Facebook witch,” because the sum of my spiritual path is much more than what I post and comment. My life as a witch is so much more than anything I do on the internet, and the same is true for most people, period.

Now I'd like to move on the statements I keep seeing regarding the supposed victims of the alleged hex. The Fae are not a large part of my practice, so I will not speak on them as much. My sister used to claim as a teenager that faeries would hide her things and that's why she could never find them. I thought this was just a dumb excuse until one day she dropped her camera memory card on the floor right in front of me, and it just disappeared. We tore her room apart looking for that thing, and I found it days later hidden between the pages of my journal. Let's just say, I've been socially distancing from the Fae ever since.

Hexing the entire Fae is kind of a ridiculous notion because that word has so many different connotations and denotations to so many different people that depending on who you ask you couldn't even really nail down a concrete definition of who and what they are, and some witches don't believe they're real at all. And if I were a Fae, I imagine I'd like it that way. It's a more common belief among witches that casting a spell requires knowledge and focus, and that doesn't really compute with attempting to target an ambiguous crowd of whatever the hell they are who might be, well, somewhere. As Willow Rosenberg (Buffy) would have said, “It's like trying to hit a puppy by throwing a live bee at it.” Anyway, I think the Fae are probably fine.

Now let's talk about the moon. So the moon is real, definitely. I've seen it. And the moon is gonna be fine. I'm less concerned with explaining why the moon will be fine and more concerned with unpacking some of the things I've heard about the moon being in peril. In the case of both the Fae and the moon, I've seen many impassioned pleas for witches to join together and combat this hex by using the magick to bless the Fae and the moon instead. Now, like I've said, I'm not super worried about the Fae, but I'm really really really not worried about the moon. Witches often leave water and objects under moonlight to bless and purify them, but now we're expected to believe that a hex can travel 238,900 miles through that same moonlight and still have the juice to do some damage. Really, its gonna be fine.

What this amounts to is a cry for an online holy war, witches versus witches, duking it out on their altars and cell phones for the fate of the moon. And while that might make for a pretty bitchin D&D campaign, it is an absolutely ludicrous waste of energy given the real world problems we are facing right now. Witches please, if you are feeling compelled to do a spell to help the world right now, hex the secret police in Portland, hex the fascist elements in government, hex the damn coronavirus, bless the protesters, bless election security, BLESS RUTH BADER GINSBURG! But please reconsider spending your effort playing tug of war with a celestial body that is most definitely totally going to be fine.

The three most concerning claims I have seen about how this hex against the moon will affect us are as follows:

1.) “The moon rules emotions, so hexing the moon will have a negative effect on all our emotions.” Yeah, um, that's probably got more to do with the horror survival game that is 2020, which I think we can all agree has not been anyone's year. Placing the state of our emotions under the control of strangers on the internet is a classic case of blame avoidance, in which we feel justified in our reckless actions and emotional outbursts by claiming it is not our fault or out of our control. Contrarily, a common tenet of much of witchcraft is control of the self. Such behavior is very unbecoming of anyone bearing the mantle of the witch.

2.) “Hexing the moon has angered the moon goddess Artemis, and this has angered her brother Apollo—who rules over medicine—and now we will never recover from the coronavirus.” Wow, that's a lot to unpack. First of all, are Artemis and Apollo really that close? Because he totally tricked her into killing her BF Orion that one time. Second, not everyone believes in the same deities, and not everyone believes in gods at all. Telling someone we're all gonna die of COVID-19 because of a god they don't believe in does not make anyone look smart. Third, this argument places the outcome of the pandemic in the hands of religion instead of where it belongs, which is in the hands of science. Witches, please, you can believe in science and faith and magick all at the same time, and it's something we all really need to start doing. Fourth, and most definitely worst, blaming sickness and plague on the spells of witches is something witch hunters did back when it was commonplace to murder people for witchcraft, and now we are actually seeing this claim come from other witches! Gah! I can't even. Please stop.

3.) “This or that moon goddess is mad and is going to retaliate by taking magick away from all witches.” I really just want to drop that GIF of Krysten Ritter rolling her eyes right here. Let's revisit the part where not all witches believe in the same deities and some don't believe in them at all. Now let's remind ourselves that magick comes from within, and while we may draw strength from outside sources, we don't need anything other than ourselves to perform witchcraft. I could never possibly believe that an action taken by another person I've never met could make me less of a witch. That smacks of fundamental insecurity in one's beliefs.

At this point, this story has been picked up by several major media companies, including Buzzfeed, NPR, Cosmopolitan, Rolling Stone, and several others. While I do think it's important for stories about real life witches to be covered in the media, I am not proud of this moment of exposure. Every story I read seems to go back to the original Twitter thread as their primary source, which as I've explained, is not sufficient evidence. This story has become more about the global visceral reactions witches are having online, and while those feelings and interactions are certainly real, it disturbs me that the witch community is making huge news by essentially throwing tantrums based on what is probably a lie.

Witches are not featured in major media very often, and when we are it is typically characterized by gross misinformation. I fear that we are currently fueling a fire that will only serve to make witches look ridiculous to a large number of people outside our community. And while I think we all have a healthy touch of “I don't care what you think about me,” it would be irresponsible to say that this will not have actual consequences for real people. As witchcraft is a practice and not necessarily a religion, it has little in the way anti-discrimination protections for anyone anywhere, and witches are still very much minorities. People who are brave enough to live openly as witches may face discrimination in employment, housing, service, and various other things if this story sways public opinion in a negative way, which would be a real shame considering the story is basically a sham.

This story has unique potential to damage the way witches are perceived in society because, while the story is fueled by backlash from witches are most certainly not hexing the moon, the witches doing the hexing are the headline. In this era, it is more common for people to assume a story from a headline rather than read an entire article, and so I fear the general impression people are getting is that witches are unfathomable children who really want the moon to fall out of the sky. And for those who actually read the articles, their first impression of witches very well may be the frustrated rantings of those of us who are not at our best right now.

In addition, this story subverts the historical meaning of the practice of hexing into a petty malicious act done out of boredom. The actual history of hexing stems from one common theme: the powerless trying to find a way to fight back against the powerful. This is why so many hexes have to do with women seeking revenge on abusive men. This is why witches have recently been discussed in the media for doing mass binding spells on President Trump and a mass hex on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh—which, controversial as they may be, these are stories I am actually proud of. So witches reading this, if you really wanna put a hex on something, let's target someone who really deserves it.

And if you think I'm referring to Betsy DeVos, well, I can't stop you from coming to that conclusion.

I do have one final remark, which is somewhat unrelated, but still important. If you are a witch who has found yourself deeply offended by the notion of hexing the moon (which you have every right to feel), I would invite you to please consider the feelings of indigenous people who have long been offended by the misappropriations of their culture, by their sacred acts being used and portrayed in ways they do not like or approve of. I think many of them have often felt the same way that you do now, except in their case, there's a lot more evidence the transgression actually occurred.