renelfchild | Recent Entries

I did make sort of an introductory post when I started using DW, but here's a more comprehensive one to stick to the top of my blog!

I'm a late 20's otherkind individual with various fictional connections that influence my identity more than regular society would accept.
I'm a Pop Culture Pagan who worships fiction itself, and I have a longstanding non-worshipful relationship with a canon-divergent version of Erik, the titular character of Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera.
It/she/he, dealer's choice re: frequency and configuration
I'm on tumblr (sometimes, sort of) @jackrabbitten.

You can call me Ren!

A meditation on Hyakinthos, Apollon, death & rebirth.

This is a really, really old piece, and one of my favorite things I've ever written. I haven't posted much about Hellenic Polytheism here recently, or the pre-Hellenic stuff I was tentatively poking around in, because I realized I really needed to have a fallow period after being so obsessively fixated on those relationships while I was sick. But I've been giving a lot of thought to my feelings about predation and food and death lately, and it brought this piece of writing to mind again.

CW: animal death, obviously.

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An essay about being afraid. CW for implication of child abuse, though it's not explicit, light discussion of kink and sexist horror tropes. "Ahhhh scary!" was my placeholder title for this document and I just couldn't come up with a better title.

I: This Is An Evil Place; Flee While You Can

When I was a little kid – like, in the single digits, although I don’t remember what age exactly – I read Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and I was so unbelievably terrified by the story The Dream (specifically the art that went with it, of course) that I couldn’t stop crying and I couldn’t fall asleep. Eventually, I woke my parents up to tell them how scared I was, and their response was to say that I shouldn’t read those books anymore.

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[Some discussion of ableism/saneism and intolerance]

I think about the people who get kicked out of niche pagan, alterhuman, etc. spaces online, both reasonably and unfairly, with some variation on the theme of "you should go talk to a professional" all the time.

Yes, it's true that you as Some Guy Running A Discord Server can't reasonably drop everything and walk this stranger through whatever it is they're dealing with that's making them antagonize everyone else in the server. But somebody has to, eventually. Right? Well, they don't have to.

But I wish they would. I'd like it to be me.

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This is just a bit of musing on how animism with fictional characters relates to having fictives, and also the muse relationships I have with fictional characters. There's a little bit of discussion about disability and illness at the end.

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CW for just... I don't know, melancholy? It's not all bad, but this is less of an essay and more of a slightly morose journal entry.

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So... I don't really know where else to put this, and I'm going to brave the waters of dreamwidth just to see how it goes. I just withdrew from basically all of my online presences Because Of Reasons, and now I'm figuring out where to start again. This is just a rambling, unstructured little piece about the formation of new headmates and the nature of fictives in my system. Maybe it'll be helpful for you, maybe it won't. Either way, please know that my system is very spiritual and I don't consider my plurality to be disordered, at least not always, so if that's not for you, you'll want to look elsewhere.

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Current Mood: curious
Current Music: Grouper - Poison Tree

CW: Surgery discussion (non-specific)

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Yes, and that's okay.

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I've been thinking about escapism a lot lately.

"Don't use your religion as escapism" is a commonly touted (and perfectly reasonable) rule of thumb, and often Pop Culture Paganism (or even niche practices within established faiths, like God-marriage) is seen as inherently escapist. Clearly you're escaping from the real world by having vicarious adventures with your imaginary friends, right? And the same goes for fictionkind identity - supposedly.

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This is by no means a comprehensive explanation of all my reasons for worshiping fiction, but it's a very important piece of the puzzle.

CW: Same as with my last piece that discussed Lennier, there are major Babylon 5 spoilers ahead, so proceed with caution. There's also some brief discussion of Greek rape myths in the context of mythic literalism (and why I don't subscribe to it,) as well as nonspecific discussion of me feeling unsafe around my parents as a teen.

I've written about Lennier before, and I don't know if I did a very good job of explaining... the thing.

What do I mean by that?

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They get to be both.

Your imaginary friend, the fictional vampire you’re enchanted by, the monster you want to change or make worse. Your real friend, your fully formed spirit companion, your God whose monstrosity you worship. They get to be both. They are always, always both. The two are never apart from one another.

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Something I've held onto from Minbar is the idea that "we are the Universe trying to understand itself."

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This entry contains fairly major spoilers for Babylon 5! Read at your own risk.

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Here's one of the most distressing sentiments I hear on a regular basis from newcomers to Pop Culture Paganism: I guess I should probably stop writing/reading fanfic of these characters if I'm going to work with them as spirits.

Everyone's going to have a different perspective on these things, of course, but personally, I feel like that goes against the entire ethos of PCP. If you think back to what got you interested in this form of Paganism in the first place, it's probably the organic connection you formed with a piece of fiction through normal fan activities. If you cut yourself off from the source of your inspiration, what is your practice going to consist of?

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An introspective journal entry about my first & second puberty, my relationship with Apollon, and the parts of my spiritual practice that feel unmistakably True.

CW: some discussion of sex, transphobia, and body image

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CW: discussion of death and transphobia

As a human, I can die much more easily than I could've as an Elf. This is an inescapable fact.

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I'm Ren, but I also go by Wasp or Helianthos in various other parts of the internet. I'm 24 and I use it/its and xe/xem/xyr pronouns (or really any other set of neopronouns that's full of z's or x's - I know it's hard to remember which specific set someone uses, and I'm not picky.)

I'm not familiar with Dreamwidth - Tumblr was my primary social media as a kid, unfortunately - and I'm here because I have a lot of weird identity aspects that aren't suited to that platform. I want to talk about them openly, and probably other stuff as well.

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