imaginary friends
Jan. 30th, 2023 12:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
renelfchildThey 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.
They get to be both real and unreal. It’s okay to have a fictional vampire boyfriend, he’s not real. You can explore all kinds of things with him that wouldn’t actually be safe in real life. He’s not going to hurt you.
You don’t have to worry about bleeding out or the real consequences of eternal life. You can reassure him that he’s not a monster and indulge in his monstrosity over and over again, replaying the same scenes without shame and not caring what you look like or whether you’re good at kissing, because he’s not real.
His unreality is sacred.
Not a sacred duty, no. Just sacred, the way that any animal simply being itself is inherently sacred. It’s a part of existence that’s sacred - the not-real, the literary or animated or acted beloved. The imaginary friend, the imaginary family. The character from a children’s show that you explored your backyard with, showing them every rock and tree and insect and delighting in their amazement. The alien from a sci-fi show that you taught how to use your dad’s espresso machine, that you introduced to video games, whose face you loved to see light up with the joy of learning new things.
They are not real. This is not a sad fact or a takedown of pop culture paganism - quite the opposite. It’s a celebration of the rich soil that pop culture paganism springs from, and a reminder not to forget it.
Galadriel can be very, very real to you. She can be a Goddess who answers your prayers, disagrees with you sometimes, and has an independent life. She can also be the fictional, perfect mother figure you never had, but still had through your Lord of the Rings DVDs, who never chastised you or criticized you. She is always both.
There’s no concrete explanation for how they are both. There doesn’t need to be. It’s not a paradox. There’s simply no hard dividing line between the “real” and the “not real”, like we’ve always thought - not when it comes to them.
It’s so easy to look at these things and say, Well, obviously if he was a real spirit, my imaginary vampire boyfriend would be disgusted by all the ridiculous fanfic I've written about him. Of course I can’t worship him now that I’m a "serious" Pop Culture Pagan who "knows better", because even if he was real, he wouldn’t like me.
But is it actually a bad thing that you were so deep in secular fan activities? Do you have to trash every headcanon you ever came up with? Do you have to make up for "objectifying" or "woobifying" him, or can you maybe just accept that you spent some really healthy, necessary time in the sacred space of personal exploration that fiction provides, and find new ways to turn the personal growth you accomplished toward spiritual pursuits?
This is something I’ve thought about quite a bit regarding the Snapewives, actually. I have a lot of love for many aspects of what they did, but the intense level of disgust for “disrespectful” fanfiction that some of them had just… hurts me.
The idea that there’s only one “real” version of a character, that said version is “better than” or has somehow ascended their canon and fanon portrayals, and not only that, the idea that they hate people who disagree with you about them and would never, ever even consider forming relationships with them…
When people say things like that, I have to wonder why they’ve chosen to practice Pop Culture Paganism.
I love my Erik. They’re very different from pretty much every other version of the Phantom of the Opera that I’ve seen in Pop Culture Paganism, and also extremely canon-divergent. Those differences are important to me, and they help me identify “my Erik,” by which I mean the parts of Erik that are facing toward me in this life.
But because I love my Erik, I also love canon Erik, and all the various fanon Eriks. I did not do “spirit work” in the traditional sense with them when I was growing up. I watched POTO adaptations and read the book and read and wrote fanfiction. That was it, and that was enough, because I desperately needed fiction.
In a previous entry, I said that I view fiction as a forest. In that metaphor, traditional fannish activities are broad appreciation of the forest, whereas spiritual engagement with specific characters is like speaking to an individual tree.
Fiction is my home, and I love my home. I’m never going to leave it, nor will I harm someone else's connection to it by saying "Well, actually, Erik loves me more than you because I know the real them, and your headcanons are disgusting and disrespectful."
To re-iterate what I said in that post: I love those characters for who they are, and they’re not just my personal friends. They are part of the forest as well, and the forest isn't just for me. It's for anyone and everyone who needs it.
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.
They get to be both real and unreal. It’s okay to have a fictional vampire boyfriend, he’s not real. You can explore all kinds of things with him that wouldn’t actually be safe in real life. He’s not going to hurt you.
You don’t have to worry about bleeding out or the real consequences of eternal life. You can reassure him that he’s not a monster and indulge in his monstrosity over and over again, replaying the same scenes without shame and not caring what you look like or whether you’re good at kissing, because he’s not real.
His unreality is sacred.
Not a sacred duty, no. Just sacred, the way that any animal simply being itself is inherently sacred. It’s a part of existence that’s sacred - the not-real, the literary or animated or acted beloved. The imaginary friend, the imaginary family. The character from a children’s show that you explored your backyard with, showing them every rock and tree and insect and delighting in their amazement. The alien from a sci-fi show that you taught how to use your dad’s espresso machine, that you introduced to video games, whose face you loved to see light up with the joy of learning new things.
They are not real. This is not a sad fact or a takedown of pop culture paganism - quite the opposite. It’s a celebration of the rich soil that pop culture paganism springs from, and a reminder not to forget it.
Galadriel can be very, very real to you. She can be a Goddess who answers your prayers, disagrees with you sometimes, and has an independent life. She can also be the fictional, perfect mother figure you never had, but still had through your Lord of the Rings DVDs, who never chastised you or criticized you. She is always both.
There’s no concrete explanation for how they are both. There doesn’t need to be. It’s not a paradox. There’s simply no hard dividing line between the “real” and the “not real”, like we’ve always thought - not when it comes to them.
It’s so easy to look at these things and say, Well, obviously if he was a real spirit, my imaginary vampire boyfriend would be disgusted by all the ridiculous fanfic I've written about him. Of course I can’t worship him now that I’m a "serious" Pop Culture Pagan who "knows better", because even if he was real, he wouldn’t like me.
But is it actually a bad thing that you were so deep in secular fan activities? Do you have to trash every headcanon you ever came up with? Do you have to make up for "objectifying" or "woobifying" him, or can you maybe just accept that you spent some really healthy, necessary time in the sacred space of personal exploration that fiction provides, and find new ways to turn the personal growth you accomplished toward spiritual pursuits?
This is something I’ve thought about quite a bit regarding the Snapewives, actually. I have a lot of love for many aspects of what they did, but the intense level of disgust for “disrespectful” fanfiction that some of them had just… hurts me.
The idea that there’s only one “real” version of a character, that said version is “better than” or has somehow ascended their canon and fanon portrayals, and not only that, the idea that they hate people who disagree with you about them and would never, ever even consider forming relationships with them…
When people say things like that, I have to wonder why they’ve chosen to practice Pop Culture Paganism.
I love my Erik. They’re very different from pretty much every other version of the Phantom of the Opera that I’ve seen in Pop Culture Paganism, and also extremely canon-divergent. Those differences are important to me, and they help me identify “my Erik,” by which I mean the parts of Erik that are facing toward me in this life.
But because I love my Erik, I also love canon Erik, and all the various fanon Eriks. I did not do “spirit work” in the traditional sense with them when I was growing up. I watched POTO adaptations and read the book and read and wrote fanfiction. That was it, and that was enough, because I desperately needed fiction.
In a previous entry, I said that I view fiction as a forest. In that metaphor, traditional fannish activities are broad appreciation of the forest, whereas spiritual engagement with specific characters is like speaking to an individual tree.
Fiction is my home, and I love my home. I’m never going to leave it, nor will I harm someone else's connection to it by saying "Well, actually, Erik loves me more than you because I know the real them, and your headcanons are disgusting and disrespectful."
To re-iterate what I said in that post: I love those characters for who they are, and they’re not just my personal friends. They are part of the forest as well, and the forest isn't just for me. It's for anyone and everyone who needs it.
