The main reason it's important to be at least somewhat literate in historical paganism and folk magic isn't so you can make your own practice exactly like it; it's to be able to recognize when someone is making historically inaccurate claims, because "asserting made-up shit about history as real fact" is a sign you're possibly looking at a cult and/or scam.

For the same reason, it's a good idea to be somewhat literate in pop culture media. Because being able to look at something a person is trying to pass off as Genuine Ancient Tradition or something and recognize that it's nothing like anything people actually believed or did back in Ye Olden Times but it sure as heck resembles something from a popular TV show or TTRPG is a valuable discernment skill.

Two things that are true:

1. All art can help us discover things about ourselves; popular media’s potential to illuminate shouldn’t be disdained simply because it doesn’t meet some arbitrary set of qualifications to be considered “real art”.

2. Reddit gamebros realising they’re subs because they played Elden Ring and kind of liked it when Ranni was mean to them is objectively very funny.

I finally got around to drawing the lps @lpsotd gave me to draw!

I struggled a bit with the cat hhhh (you can probably tell)

I don’t know who needs to hear this but...posts that have tens of thousands of likes and retweets/reblogs can still be 100% wrong. A lot of people believe wrong things, don’t fact check shit, or completely miss the point of certain popular media. Make sure to keep a mind of your own and be careful

I would like to point out for your attention please that all of that quick navigating on the spot that they did in the movie Twister was done via paper map with no GPS. they were just playing left right game to get to the tornado in the fucking distance.

Honestly, it would be really refreshing to see less intelligent characters being portrayed more seriously and respectfully. Like I get it, moments of stupidity or obliviousness can be really comedic. But, like, there are less intelligent people irl and ykno it can just get tiring sometimes. And obviously there's different kinds of intelligence, close to nobody is a genius in all areas. But I'm talking in overall terms. Like some people just have lower mental capacity and that's okay. They deserve to be taken seriously in their experiences and feelings too, even if they "don't understand" or whatever. And it'd be nice to see in media too.

It'd be nice to see less intelligent characters be accommodated for by the other characters, given the patience and help they need and not be made fun of for something they can't control. It could be used to show positive relationships really well. The mistreatment of less intelligent characters,- whether or not they "make up for it" in other traits (being the strong one usually), should be taken seriously. It doesn't always have to be that someone is strong but stupid. A character can just be less capable, that's fine.

I get the appeal, really, but I'm just tired of always seeing the same stuff like this. In some cases it can really easily just slip into full on ableism. People of different cognitive abilities deserve more respect

Is their any other popular media about greek mythology other than pjo? Cus I only think of hades

There's Hades, there's the Goddess Girls series, there's the Pandora's Box series (i never did finish that one, only had one book left...), There's the pegasus series (if you wanna go "this can't get weirder" and get proven wrong a dozen times read that one, so weird, so good). There's a variety of one off books that are popular (Song of Achilles for example), and there's some shows (Blood of Zeus, Hercules, etc).

The Greek myths are pretty popular to play with, we know more about them than most ancient Western religions/mythologies (Gods the reason there are so many Egyptologist is cause we know so little, it's insane) so for Western audience stuff they're a very popular tool.

Don't you know? Everything popular is objectively bad, and you're bad for enjoying it. The more popular it is, the worse a person you are. Sorry. It says so in the Bible.

Can I just say, I’m kind of sick of sympathetic villains.

Like I think the concept is fine, though I’ve never really cared for villains in general, it’s always been a bit lost on me.

But given that sympathetic villains is the default now, and basically everything devotes so much time to trying to making you feel bad and sympathize with bad guys. I’m really just over it. Like I didn’t mind too much when it was a bit of a trend, but it wasn’t in literally everything.

But as someone that doesn’t relate or identify w/ villains, it just equates to large chunks of stories being dedicated to characters I don’t care about, and story developments I dont like, like the constant unearned redemptions just because a villain has a sad backstory, and is constantly given excuses, but doesn’t actually do anything to earn it.

That’s the norm and expectation now, and it sucks. Not just for my personal enjoyment, but for stories too, now that every villain is a hot, sad/angry person where sympathy and redemption is forgone conclusion and not something earned or given any weight.

When every villain is sympathetic, it just feels like there aren’t any actual villains, and it just diminishes the good examples. Like can’t bad people just be evil? Irl so many people are just unabashedly, remorselessly terrible in the most banal and mundane ways for practically no other reasons other than greed, selfishness, and malice.

One of the worse parts of writing is when you create something amazing, only to stop yourself from using it because you think it’s too similar to a piece of popular media and you don’t want people to yell at you about how similar they are. 

Like, I created one of the best helmet designs for an army that my villain uses, only to stop and stare at it for way too long and say ‘the front of it looks like boba fett’s helmet’ and now I can’t sleep until I make a new helmet design.

I wish my mind would just shut up sometimes.

I've noticed how DC seems to get more heavily criticized than Marvel at times within some circles or just in general. Like I hear how some people say DC movies aren't as popular or don't make as much box office money compared to MCU movies, also I've been noticing a lot of how DC seems to get a lot more heat against it compared to Marvel. Honestly while am not a hardcore DC person ( although I’ve been getting more into some of the certain comics or animations ) but I never understood why DC gets more shit on while Marvel is treated as God-tier "cinema" that can't ever be criticized or no one can say anything slightly negative about the MCU unless you want pitchforks and massive hate against you for even daring to say anything about Marvel that isn’t constant praise or nonstop love for it. Like Marvel is completely incapable of having flaws or major issues with its production or writing and also dealing with what goes on behind the scenes in terms of the actors not knowing what's going on with the full scripts & other issues with the MCU, I never understood why Marvel is treated as always amazing or as the ultimate thing when it comes to movies while DC seems to get twice as more criticism against it than shining Marvel for some reasons.

I am strong believer that we form ourselves by the media we consume. All the tropes and stories we loved as children will turn into a faint blueprint of our craved reality. Maybe not remarkably, but still, if you pay attention for a bit, you'll find hints everywhere.

Everything we let in, leaves a mark.

Some anthro pokemon guys I drew on my phone :] Lines are messy but eh it’s whatever

can we stop doing this trope

A lot of people on this website make great points that could be phrased a lot less condescendingly

for anyone too young to know this: watching The Truman Show is a vastly different experience now, compared to how it was before youtube and social media influencers became normal

before it was like, "what a horrifying thing to do to a human being! to take away their autonomy and privacy, all for the sake of profits! to create fake scenarios for them to react to, just to retain viewership! to ruin their happiness just so some corporate entity could harvest money from their very humanity! how could anyone do something so evil?"

and now it's like, "ah, yeah. this is still deeply fucked up, but it's pretty much what every influencer has been doing to their kids for a decade now. probably bad that we've normalized this experience"