zuki_san

Tue, 05 Feb 2019 13:21:49 GMT

my shitposting procrastination project for today is necroing the comments section of posts of erryone on my reading page with whatever fandom nonsense I want to splatter out that I might have been too shy to reblog on tumblr.

I should check and see if the artist that made this icon did any weasel or stoat animal guide art.

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shitposting, huh? Well I should be asleep so that's a good start.

Tue, 05 Feb 2019 05:05:59 GMT

so first I took that one OC from that one homestuck roleplay and rewrote him as the protagonist of a NaNoWriMo novel more-or-less set in the setting of Dr. Jenna Moran's Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine.

I want to take that other OC from that same homestuck roleplay and rewrite her as the protagonist of a magical girl series where I just wank leftist allegory all over everything.

where the first thing she empowers herself with is the right to be angry and take up space. cleansing mother fucking fire. BE CRIMES, find out you DO GAY

where "learning that there are monsters in the world, that they're not far away, they're right here and they've been right here the whole time" is the allegory for learning to recognize police brutality and the violence of the state.

monster-of-the-week: the result of an otherization process imposed on people by society?

except then I also want to gank the mythos and aesthetic of We Know The Devil (and its spiritual successor, Heaven Will Be Mine), and what it posits about devils and monsters and queerness and being our truest selves.

a lot of my friends are unrepentant monsterfuckers and I am too and I love that we're all fully on our bullshit like that.

except then I also LOVE WEREWOLF NARRATIVES, and there's nothing quite like the shock of,
'so that thing you do? uh, that's disassociating.'
'so uh when you disassociate you ~~turn into a monster~~ transform and go around and express your repressed and socially unacceptable desires'
'i'm doing f u c k i n g w h a t'
~~yeah it's hot as fuck~~
~~zuki get your horny allosexual authorial mitts off this you originally characterized this protag character as ace spectrum~~

AND SO THEN

there's the 'how do I mash up Persona into this?' element.
which is obviously relevant, re:
the necessity of facing and owning your shadow and its desires
hey here's the cool god/monster/hero that represents your soul
p4's 'face and embrace your probably-queer self' and p5's 'embrace your inner rebel and decide to enact justice in a corrupt system; direct action gets the goods.'

-

season 2 is about collective action and community organizing, probably, but magical girl style.

other cool themes: being edgey versus being vulnerable, transformative and restorative justice, destroying corruption versus building new power, the false catharsis of reenacting how you were hurt...

and so yeah. let's fight the fucking state and capital and, yeah, probably the world WILL end(fuck you, global warming) but if we really do believe in the fucking power of friendship and solidarity and mutual aid........well. lots of people are still going to die and that's going to be awful and sad. but we can know we're building a better world for us and for the future.

I don't know how to start this, but I have a lot I want to say about monsters and queers and anarchy and mutual aid and friendship

also like my protagonist needs a fucking family and I -think- she's in the foster system but I really don't know a lot about that and figuring out where to start the research is hard.

was this a shitpost? I don't know, man.

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So Long, 'blr! I can't ever say I liked you.

Mon, 03 Dec 2018 23:22:50 GMT

I wish I saw DW coming up more often in people's "i'm migrating here" discussions, because, well, we've got two weeks to get all of the content lifeboats outta the blue site.

Maybe I'll start posting here again. we'll see!

As it is I still have another two weeks of the semester to survive.

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Collections, protections, and personal rituals.

Fri, 01 Oct 2010 16:43:09 GMT

Many pagans and any sensible magical practitioner will have their own rituals and practices for protection, warding, and psychic hygiene. People carry rocks or mojo bags, etch bindrunes and sigils, smudge with sage or other herbs or incenses, sprinkle blessed water or oil, or other more elaborate sequences. At least one individual I know likes to use techniques from a number of different traditions and cultural sources. The idea makes good sense to me--there are more people strongly versed in a single tradition than strongly flexible eclectics, so most people will probably only know a few counters.

So I'm going to write about one of my own personal traditions.

I collect shisa. You'll probably know them better as foo dogs, foo lions, chinese guardian lions, shrine dogs, komainu, shishi, 'that beast in her avatar image,' etc. I specifically say shisa, because that's the name for the regional variant found in Okinawa and the Ryuku islands, and that's the kind I like best.

For as long as I could remember, Dad had a pair of foo dogs, which he bought and brought home from Japan. They're a dark red terracotta, and one of them once broke in half and had to be glued back together, and I love them dearly.

But I could never find another foo dog that looked quite like his pair, until my early years of college. I spotted a singleton in a nearly identical style, but in a heavy white ceramic, with a shiny painted glaze of green and white and copper-brown. I snatched it up from the antique store, learned that it had had a matching left-hand partner dog, but that someone else had bought it a few weeks ago. I was a bit upset that someone would split up a pair like that!

On the other hand, I finally had a foo dog of my own.

Eventually I learned, through one lucky day digging around wikipedia, that the particular liondog variant I liked so much was called a 'shisa,' and that they originated from Okinawa. I would periodically search for the matching partner for my shisa, and I gradually accumulated a collection of other shisa and shrine dogs when I saw the particular arrangment of facial features I like, when I can convince myself to spare the money or wanted it badly enough to tighten my belt, and so on. I think I have enough for now.

I have four 'pairs'/eight statues (one is a left-side singleton to match my original right-side singleton, but it's of a different style) in all by now, and my friends have joked that I can't get any better protected from evil, with all the ceramic guardians I keep around.

Sometimes I just burn incense for the smell, but when I'm in an offering or smudging mood, I give the shisa special attention. Each statuette is picked up in turn and thoroughly 'fed' or wreathed with smoke. Most of them are hollow inside, and one can see the smoke wash out of the open eye, mouth, and noseholes. (It's a neat effect! I'd like to try and find an appropriate cone incense and do it on purpose with the larger statues.) I've also given them good dark chocolate when I have it, candied ginger, and, today, the shared out slices of half an orange.

I suppose you see similar practices in Hinduism, and sometimes in Shinto (people often leave treats or gifts for the fox statues that flank Inari shrines, but I can't find any record of same for the more common and typical statues), but I didn't start doing this out of any conscious choice of emulation. Still, I'm going to keep tending to my little pack of guardian spirits--they've seemingly shown up in visualizations/guided meditations for me a few times now, and I think I'd like to develop this relationship further.

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First post, huzzah. Religion on the brain.

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 22:36:22 GMT

Well, here I am.

I think I want to start using this thing. Perhaps I'll make a daily post to track my progress and actions taken as I look for a job and get myself a more organized life. My ADHD hates it, but more tightly organizing how I spend my time will help a lot with that.

I joined Ar nDraiocht Fein/ADF druidry this month, and I'm looking forward to more active engagement with my local grove and with myself. (Note to self, make a post talking about the two High Rite rituals I've already attended, Spring Equinox and Lughnassadh.)

Not sure if I'll do the Dedicant's Path/Program right away, but I'm at a point in my life where I've got a lot of free time, easy access to a university library, and I sort of miss studying and research, now that I'm graduated from college. (I plan to go back in the next year-and-change, because the sort of work that I really want to make my vocation is going to require some sort of Master's degree, probably in Social Work. Maybe Public Health.)

Let's make this an introduction post of a sorts. Ask me questions about stuff, any kind of stuff, in the comments! Let's list out some other things I want to be doing with my life right now, or some salient facts about me that those reading this might not know. Equinoxes are good transitions.

I'm drawn to the concept of shamanism, for bucketsfull of reasons. Overlapping, fussy, multitextured reasons. I don't know if I -want- to be a shaman (evidence suggests it is a large bucket of Be Careful What You Wish For, and that the person I am now wouldn't be up to the task), but there are aspects of the role (well, the several roles that it may be) that resonate well with me. I realized while I was writing this post that the concept serves okay as an idealized model for what I want to be doing with my life.

On the mundane side:
Service to a community, the domains of physical and psychological health, healing. Acting as an intermediary or an advocate.

On the spiritual side:
Direct, ecstatic experience with world and spirit and Otherworld. (I have a great deal of curiosity and theoretical knowledge about altered states of consciousness and trance, but not enough personal experience yet. Not in nearly good enough shape or practce to stay up all night dancing or drumming...yet.) Better communication with my guides. Another toolset and another perspective to approach the kinds of work I'm already going to be going anyways, with my life.

But, really, it's the concept of the interdisciplinary approach. The more approaches I can use to understand a situation, the better. The world is not simple, it is complex. The more methods one can utilize at once to handle or manage a complex problem, the better off it will be. I could be talking about mental illness, poverty, or climate change, and the principle holds true.

I want to be a person who understands many perspectives, I want to be a person with many tools at my belt.

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