fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5854 ]

[ SECRET POST #5854 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5854 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 40 secrets from Secret Submission Post #838.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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I mean, in this particular monster's case, it's not like it's a vague "no touching" warning--it's people inside the culture it comes from asking "hey can you not keep writing about this part of our culture, especially when you're not understanding it" and people from the dominant culture that has been actively destroying them for centuries saying "nah, it's cool". I feel like the specifics matter in what's being asked.

I looked this up. It’s a fucking wendigo. You cannot be serious that this thing is more “important” or “sacred” or whatever than when Monster Musume or whatever the fuck reinterprets the minotaur as a sexy cow-girl.

(Also, Patriot the last wendigo is one of the best antagonists in Arknights, and I will see no criticism of him.)

It IS more serious than the fucking minotaur, if you would bother to listen to what people say besides "you can't have it".

Speaking of cows, would you be so dismissive of, say, a Hindu person not wanting to go to a steak restaurant?

This analogy does not work, because it is comparing two situations that are not the same

in the one case, you're talking about a Hindu *having to go* to a specific restaurant. in the other case, you're talking about whether fictional stories about the mythology of disenfranchised cultures made by people not from that culture should exist at all.

Fair enough. It's hard to find a fitting comparison, but the way I've understood it (as a non-native person) is that it's not "just" a story about a fictional/mythological monster. It's something that ties deeply into the spirituality of the tribes the stories originated from, and therefore it's way more comparable to a religious belief than to a European myth.

I mean it literally is, many people are being serious, and if you're STILL genuine in your obtuseness, I don't know how to tell you that other people matter.

It’s a fucking wendigo.

This. Thank you.

Yeah, and do you know anything about its cultural origin, or do you just think "ooh, antlers and cannibalism! I wanna play!"

+1000

The antlers aren't even a part of the original spiritual belief, it's made up by people not a part of the culture, and it's overwriting the original belief. Just disrespectful all around. Just make up an original name for it and leave native American religion out of it.

Yeppppppppppp. There are thousands of other creatures and stories to play with. Go do that.

It's people having this kind of attitude that keep perpetuating the ignorant idea that it's not a serious request.

Watching you stubbornly refuse to grow as a person over the last 10 or so years sure has been something.

+1
It's ridiculous that certain things are just considered somehow more holy and untouchable than another culture's stuff. Mythology is either a free-for-all or it isn't. If some people who believe in Shinto were horribly offended by other cultures using creatures and gods from their mythology, should we all stop riffing on it? What percentage of believers being offended and saying 'stop it' is required before we all have to capitulate? How many oppression points? Nah, forget that.

DA

You're using "oppression points" in the context of further allowing the overwriting of Native American religion, of which Native Americans are plenty familiar with and constantly at risk of. Taking offense is not the same as being written out of history and culture. To describe the totality of how much has been taken away from Native Americans using twee internet language like oppression points shows an astounding lack of knowledge and respect towards cultures other than your own, and readers would be right to say your art/story is shit and disrespectful.

Nnno, oppression points completely covers it, actually, thanks. How else do we choose whose sacred cows are actually sacred?

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2023-01-16 12:17 (UTC) - Expand

If you could hear past your own entitlement you might possibly be able to understand that other people actually exist as more than NPC's in your life, but then you're the same idiot who thinks that authors shouldn't get paid for their hard work so, the idiocy at least tracks.

Knew you were dense, didn't realize you were a racist imperialistic piece of shit whose fun times overrode actual near-genocided cultures like a Nazi thinks they get to do.

The w*ndigo is a warning about imperailistic greed in many ways (and even before that about greed from other sources) and you right now are being said creature in your greed to consume something in your cutesy animal people game, so I hope you get banned, lose your account, and your phone blows up somewhere no one gets hurt but just won't work ever again. Your stupid anime husbando isn't more important than cultural understanding, you imperialistic nightmare bitch.

This comment to the poster above was nasty and unnecessary. You may not agree with them but that does not give you the right to be abusive.

I mean, she's a racist and imperialist bitch so I really don't care when she feels like she can trample all over an abused and near-genocided culture just because her husbando. She cant, quite frankly, get fucked and eat shit for all I care for how nasty and unnecessary her white ass is being over a fucking gacha anime character.

I've read lore about wendigo occasionally, and did about an hour of Googling on it just now particularly trying to find any statements on why it shouldn't be written about by just anyone. I haven't found any. Most of what I've always heard is that the problem is the misrepresentation of what it originally is, but not that the act of writing about without being from one of the peoples it belongs to is inherently wrong. If "Don't write about it" is being said everywhere by experts from these peoples and I'm too dumb to find it, I believe in respecting that, and now that I've even heard that it is I wouldn't do it just in case. But I also feel like it's really not as easy to know you're not supposed to write about it if you do even basic research, as is the vibe I'm getting from your comment.

Yeah, it's fair if you just didn't know, but the people arguing in these comments do seem to know and still don't care about the request.

As for the reason, I wish I could find the information I learned it from, and disclaimer that I'm not native, but my understanding is that it's severalfold: 1) as you said, the misrepresentation and lack of understanding or respect of the original source, 2) general frustration at yet another instance of white people refusing to respect boundaries that indigenous people repeatedly request, and 3) (again, as I understand it as a non-native) this creature not being a simple "ooh, scary monster!" but a representation of a cultural "warning", something of a risk that makes one become nonhuman, and something you're not supposed to risk invoking by referencing it in the first place. It's not a campfire story or a cryptid, it's a spiritual entity/wrongness, and taking it out of that context to make it just some weird cryptid inherently implies a disrespect of the spirituality.

da

as a british person with no dog in this fight... i *do* disrespect the spirituality - the people treating this with an almost religious reverence remind me of those who say we shouldn't make cartoons about mohammed and it just makes me end up hating the lot of them

perfectly on brand for you to not respect other peoples cultures then since your lot went about eradicating them.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2023-01-17 02:02 (UTC) - Expand

Do you...know what spirituality means?

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