I can never leave Tumblr because after years of sporadic therapy utterly failed to even approach the core of my problem some random tumblr user was like “I processed my trauma by writing a 10,000 word work of filthy fanfic erotica” and I was like “fuck it I’ve tried everything else” and now I’m 17 chapters and 20,000 words deep into an unpublishable work of obscenity and after careful literary analysis with one of the Beloved Mutuals I have come to some Terrible Revelations about my childhood and may now continue the process of Healing. Where else am I supposed to get this kind of experience. Who does this. Why are we like this. I’m never leaving. I love y’all.
Fuck I’m at a fencing tournament and literally a minute after I reblogged this my dad told me that he talked to the point people and I’m probably going to win a medal.
I need to follow up to say I reblogged this last night, and this morning I got some of the best news of my life, like, a life dream come true news thing.
FUCK, I though it was just another lucky meme but LISTEN. Since a week ago I was waiting a phone call to confirm me if I got a job or not in my university. I reblogged this yesterday’s night “just for fun and because I don’t want any bagel to be mad with me”, and today’s afternoon, while I was losing my time as always, the professor I was supposed to work with called me and asked me for my personal information to start working with her.
Some People: Ares and Aphrodite only lust for each other and there isn't any sort of romantic love between them. She should've remained with Hephaestus.
Meanwhile Jean-Marie Vien: Here, have this painting of Aphrodite showing to Ares that her doves made a nest in his helmet.
(Obligatory disclaimer that I'm not qualified to give you medical advice, but these have helped me a lot with my muscle tension and pain)
If you're feeling significant discomfort or PAIN while stretching, back off. Don't force yourself. You can always dial these exercises back and stop at the point you need to because the last thing you want is to strain something.
TMJ syndrome (jaw pain)
- Open your mouth about 80% as wide as you can for 10 seconds, repeat 3x.
- Push your jaw forward, then open it as much as you can for 10 seconds, repeat 3x.
- Make a fist to rest your jaw on then open your mouth 10x. There should be some resistance as you're lifting the weight of your head.
Rhomboid (shoulders and upper back pain)
- Face the wall and place your arm against it in an L shape then rotate your body away from your arm to open your chest, hold for 30 seconds on both sides.
When you get more comfortable, you can extend your arm straight out behind you against the wall for a deeper stretch.
- Place one elbow on top and inside the other, hold your hands together, then lift your arms to open your shoulder blades. I can only hold this for about 10 seconds but do your best then repeat with the other arm on top.
- With your elbows bent, puff your chest out while squeezing your shoulder blades together, hold for about 10 seconds and repeat 3x.
Psoas release with pandiculation
Your psoas is a big son of a bitch muscle in the center of your body, and when it gets too tight it can affect everything from breathing to digestion. And cause a lot of pain. The exercises in this video helped me a ton. It doesn't LOOK like it does much, but it does.
This full exercise takes much longer than the others and I've found that once I did it for about a week or so, and started being aware of my posture to keep it from tightening back up, I haven't had to keep doing it all the time.
Lower back, piriformis, sciatic nerve
- Do a simple hamstring stretch with your legs straight out in front of you and feet flat against a wall to hold them at a 90* angle. Try not to bend your knees or hunch your back, just stretch as far as you're able and hold for 30 seconds.
Continue by dropping your chin to your chest so you can feel a stretch going down your spine.
- On all fours, rotate your upper body until you can feel a stretch going down the opposite side into your hips. Hold 30 seconds and repeat on the other side.
- Almost sitting cross-legged, stack your legs so that one ankle is on the other knee. Make sure both legs are parallel. Then, lean forward to feel a stretch in your piriformis (side of your ass). Hold for 30 seconds and repeat on other side.
Inner thigh
- Form a pinwheel shape with your legs, one in an L shape in front of you and the other to the side. Gently lean towards the side and press your thigh towards the floor to feel a stretch. Hold for 10-30 seconds and repeat other side.
That's about it! I try to do these exercises at least once a day especially during flare-ups, but the simpler/quicker stretches I will do multiple times throughout the day or whenever things feel tight. Consistency is key.
I was looking for references and stumbled across a series of paintings from 1930s by Soviet painter Alexander Samokhvalov called "The young women of metro construction"
Did you know that after they switched to blind auditions, major symphony orchestras hired women between 30% to 55% more? Before bringing in “blind auditions” with a screen to conceal the the candidate, women in the top 5 major orchestras made up less than 5% of the musicians performing.
so I believe it was actually more complicated than that, in interesting ways. Because at first, when they did blind auditions, they were STILL hiring more men.
…Then they put down a carpet, so that high heels didn’t clack on the floor, and BOOM women were suddenly getting hired.
The testers didn’t even know that’s what they were picking up on, which just goes to show how tiny of a cue it takes for misogyny to kick in.
The case of blind auditions for orchestras and how it dramatically changed the gender makeup of orchestras is a very illuminating example of gender bias, and an interesting possible way of countering it.
You can be sexist without knowing it. You can be racist without knowing it. This is not a moral failing; it is a moral imperative to remember that you are fallible, and take steps to limit the damage your squishy ape brain’s foibles can cause.
The final chapter in Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink (2005) describes this in detail.
What you don’t usually hear about when discussing this blind audition process is that after the blind auditions were implemented, when women had gotten many positions in the orchestra, men no longer saw being a member as prestigious and the salaries for the entire orchestra dropped.
That happens in basically any field the moment women start to show up. The most famous examples are: teaching, which lost prestige and absolute pay when it became “women’s work”; certain scientific fields, especially in biology, which has lost prestige and is now considered a “soft science” because women became biologists en masse; and in Russia, medical doctors no longer enjoy the high status they still have in the West, because in Russia a lot of women became doctors.
In the other direction, when men en masse join a field that was previously primarily women, the pay and prestige both rise. The most famous example is computer programming.
Every time I see bullshit about women never EVER being able to beat men in any sport, I think about how in martial arts classes I, a cis woman, 5' 8" and 145 pounds, regularly beat the tar out of 6' 2" 230 pound cis dude weightlifters. One guy ragequit class. He came in cocky as hell and talking the standard bs line about how a woman simply never could beat a man in a fight because they're physically weaker and our instructor was like. Okay. Put the pads on you're sparring her. Yes, her, the one 4" shorter and 100 pounds lighter than you.
It wasn't close I beat the pants off that man, and others like him. I did it more than once. Some guys got humble and stayed. One guy got angry and stormed out.
And I think about that every fuck damn time I hear that bullshit, which seems to be all the fuck over the place these days. Oh, women are just fragile little soft delicate flower creatures who can't do ANYTHING and could NEVER compete with big strong manly muscular strong MEN.
I think about driving that dude into the mats and seeing the brutal reality of this big dude's misogany meet the realization that a woman was beating his ass literally that second, that none of his strength could stop the fact that I'd just hip thrown him facefirst into the mats and that had I actually connected with the axe kick to his neck I would have crushed a bunch of important shit and he could not stop me, and his whole psyche collapsing like a dying star in that moment.
Anyway, don't ever fall for it, ladies, and there's absolutely no goddamn reason to get your knickers in a twist about trans people in sports.
People leaving comments on my posts about Indigenous knowledge as a science and its relationship with Western science like, "I know Indigenous knowledge is extremely valuable and important, but I only trust verified science." You're just racist. I'm not going to be polite.
Today, many scientists acknowledge the troubling attitudes that have long plagued research projects in Indigenous communities [...] But some Indigenous groups feel that despite such well-intentioned initiatives, their inclusion in research is only a token gesture to satisfy a funding agency.
That's you. You only want tokens for optics. You can't say, "I respect Indigenous knowledge but—" No, you don't respect Indigenous knowledge. Western science is not the only "real" science and your attempts to argue otherwise are racist. There is no argument.
It's like I'm talking to a wall. All the time when I discuss my work as a wildlife & fisheries biologist, I discuss what I have learned directly from Indigenous people in my everyday work yet it's so clear that so many people hear that and think I'm bringing it up for what reason? To appear somehow progressive?
Has everyone just believed this whole time that I bring it up for optics?
Everyone nods, "of course he mentions Indigenous people," because they believe it would simply look bad for me if I didn't.
In fact Indigenous knowledge is a constant topic of conversation and point of reference when I discuss my work as a scientist who uses Western science because my work is useless without it.
I work with endangered species which are endangered solely due to continual colonial violence against people and the land. I can follow the Western scientific method all I want and publish 100 papers on how to fix salmon populations—and get nowhere without Indigenous knowledge and sovereignty.
Indigenous knowledge is not an afterthought to reference as back up to Western science. Believe it or not, we can and should lead any number of scientific projects with Indigenous knowledge.
You need to change how you regard Indigenous knowledge on a fundamental level.
bagele chilisa's book 'indigenous research methodologies' was published in 2019, btw. it's focused on decolonizing current western research practices, but obviously to decolonize you have to understand how and why indigenous sciences deserve consideration in the first place, and what counts as evidence when we look at a body of research.
western scientific method is not The scientific method its A scientific method because others have come up with similar
one of my favorite books to recommend people "plants have so much to give us all we have to do is ask" by mary sisiip geniusz talked about this, how her job as a knowledge holder was not just to transmit the knowledge her mentor taught her, she was also expected to test and verify the knowledge for herself and continue to build upon it
a lot of the ways she talked about that knowledge coming to be, involved repeated experimentation and repeated observation very interesting stuff
honest to god we've got to start naming the elderly as a vulnerable group & calling their disabilities, disabilities. we sugarcoat and distance these things by only calling them "elderly," "old & frail," etc. most of them are disabled.
too many people completely separate disability from themselves in their mind. it's something that happens to other people. other sad people i don't want to think about. are they really even people, it's too much to bear thinking about that happening to a person... those background characters over there. it would never be me, i can't cope with thinking about that possibility.
this mass denialism of the fragility of the human body (YOUR human body) has created a whole category separate from the disabled - the "elderly." since anyone can join it if they live long enough.. no they can't be disabled. that's scary, and worse it's political. so they are just "old." so what they lost their hearing, their mobility, their heart function? that's just how it goes for old people. as if that's not a person as real as you. as if you wouldn't be devastated if that happened to you today (and it can btw). as if you won't be when it's your turn to be old, and disabled.
simultaneously the disabled are dehumanized as not people, and the elderly are dehumanized as not disabled. so the illusion of disability as separate can be upheld.
My grandparents lived to 98 and 103. Read that again— 98 and 103. My grandmother died 5 months ago and was born in 1923.
She was extremely wealthy. My grandfather left her millions. She paid about 13,000 a month for her care.
And her nurses abused her. She could do nothing. She could not speak for herself, feed herself, clothe herself, and the humiliation they made her endure was disgusting. When she tried to express discomfort, they gave her drugs to “keep her calm” (keep their shift easy). We fought like HELL to hold that fucking place accountable. The only reason we were aware is because we hired a private nurse on her behalf, too.
The elderly are a massive, extremely vulnerable, and disabled group. You cannot leave them out of your advocacy, you cannot leave them out of the conversation. “They’re loud, they smell, they’re opinionated, they’re rude, they make me uncomfortable”. I don’t care. I don’t care! They need your advocacy too! I want you to think, if my grandmother— who was in the best retirement home she could afford, with a personally hired third-party nurse to step in where the other carers failed, had such abhorrent care… what about everyone else? What about all the elderly who don’t have a support system?
I swear, some of you people somehow manage to possess all of the three most unfortunate character traits someone can have: a) kinda stupid, b) obnoxiously contrarian, c) deeply annoying.
undiagnosed autistic people will be like "I don't get upset when my routine changes though!!" and it's because they've built a set of if-then loops in their head to pick from one of 6 different strict routines and they do get incredibly upset when they're unable to keep to any of the 6 scripts. I'm john normal
This is called a fault tree. You will always know how to act if your fault tree captures all possible scenarios. In NASA Mission Control during mission critical events like landings there are huge binders with fault tree protocols, kind of like choose your own adventure books except you’re not the one making the choices, the universe is making them for you and you’re just trying to keep up.
The engineers who develop fault trees, I am told, often imagine new ways for their precious spacecraft to die (new branches on the fault trees) either while in the shower or lying awake at 3am, because human
if you’re ever in the position to choose between giving up and accepting defeat, and actually trying to fight the ancient unkillable god that is about to peel apart reality like a string cheese, remember this: scientifically speaking, you might as well give it a shot!
1.there were trees at the beginning of the world! there were trees so long ago that they predate bacteria that causes wood to decay. when a tree fell, it would lie there in stasis and there wasn’t any way of breaking down wood xylem on a molecular level in that way.
2. it seems obvious to say, but wood eating bacteria are literally incapable of comprehending what they’re breaking down. It’s just not information conciously available to a microorganism. they don’t know what they’re deconstructing, where it came from, bacteria have no way to even fathom the existence of a tree as a concept.
3. Regardless of the facts above, the world we live in today is a world where wood inevitably decomposes
it is worth fighting the unkillable god no matter how pointless it seems. it is worth taking the risk even though youre trying to accomplish something impossible. the reality in which you live was also once reality in which trees didn’t rot. You live in a reality that allows for existence before the possibility of destruction. you live in a reality where uncomprehending microbes break down matter that is so far beyond the scope of their comprehension that it feels comical to specify something so obvious. you live in a reality that occasionally allows unshakeable physical truths to be altered with no warning.
It is worth fighting the unkillable god because trees are so old they predate the source of their destruction, and it still did not spare them. It is worth fighting the unkillable god because bacteria rots unthinkingly, because there is room in our cosmos for destruction without comprehension on the part of the destroyer. It is worth fighting the unkillable god because now and then reality retracts the promise of immortality without fanfare, and when that happens there is no mercy for the ancient. the unmaking is not softer for the desecrators ignorance. for all things, existence is endless until the exact point where it ends.
so you might as well try to kill the unkillable god. it doesn’t seem likely, but at the beginning of the world, trees didn’t rot. so you never know! you never know
Right now I’m working on career assessments, and it’s made me sad how clearly they illustrate that the career I actually want is in a field of study that doesn’t really exist the Western world.
It’s the study of how consciousness interfaces with the material world, and the development of technologies utilizing this interface.
Let me introduce you to the interface I’m talking about.
Between you and these words is an invisible plane where information is being coded and decoded to create stimuli and meaning. The character of this experience—and all other experiences you have in your life—is based on a few things: Your biology and neurochemistry, your degree of awareness, and the story you tell yourself about the world and your place within it. Different configurations of these things create a different quality of experience, which determines the kind of reality you live in.
With the right knowledge and techniques, you can consciously optimize this interface so that it interprets reality in the most effective and enjoyable way. This changes the trajectory of your life in ways no other “self-improvement” method can.
This is just one example of the kind of technologies that can come out of the field I’m describing. The field itself is called metaphysics. While the West views metaphysics as philosophical thinking or even magical superstition, other cultures use it to devise methodologies to shape good character, advance their societies, and even safeguard their nations from social and cognitive collapse. It’s a real, falsifiable social science, just like psychology, anthropology, and history are.
Taking these career assessments just reminds me that all I’ve ever wanted to pursue was philosophy. As I’ve gotten older this has only intensified into wanting to research, develop, and teach the cognitive technologies I speak of. But I don’t have access to this kind of education, and even if I did take out loans for it, I wouldn’t know where to find a job as a philosopher. I don’t think there’s a single American business outside of academia that wants to invest in strengthening people’s mindbody interfaces (they want the opposite), and the chances that I could become a philosophy professor are rather slim...
I’m sorry if this sounds rather pitiful of me, but I’m grieving the fact I’ve watched all my friends settle into careers based on their interests and skills, while I’ve wasted my time following people’s advice to substitute what I actually want to do in life with “something practical.” The world told me “Nobody wants your thoughts or imagination. Just be happy selling your skills and talents,” and I believed this. I was convinced I’d be fine doing this so long as it involved some degree of creativity.
But now I feel like I’ve been scammed. My professional skills are obsolete because of what’s going on in the tech world right now, and I have no degree to help me get a job in anything else I’d enjoy; where I could use my intellect and imagination.
I made a mistake with my education and career choices that I don’t want to make again. But I also worry I’d put myself into a great deal of debt just to get a piece of paper that potentially no one will take seriously and wouldn’t afford me greater opportunities than the ones I have now...
...I’ll figure it out, I think. Right now I’m just very sad...
#i have a philosophy degree#i remember being in school learning abt the structure of knowledge and the#thoughts that exist allowing you to literally#tinker with your own psyche#it feels like magic#genuinely high fantasy wizard-with-a-spellbook magic#and ever since i graduated#every#single#time#that i have tried to so much as share this knowledge with my friends and peers#their eyes glaze over#forget using this in a professional context#people do NOT care even on a personal level#my lovers will humor me bc they like to see me excited about things#my friends will abide my esoteric interests as long as i am careful not to challenge their worldviews too hard#but philosophy is not a field you should go into if you have a choice#i did not#there simply was nothing else for me to study#some of us are always going to be made miserable by our passions#i keep going bc i hope that someday someone else will come along who cares that we live in a world of magic#but there seems to be a consensus among practicing philosophers that the#general population has become#maybe always was#violently resistant to learning#lighting the spark in someone takes an investment of time and energy that simply isnot scalable under#currently extant educational frameworks#and honestly i despair because#nobody#genuinely not a single person ihave ever read
That last post I reblogged got me thinking again about how people can’t separate their idea of manhood from violence.
It’s like some people are capable of imagining womanhood without submission but can’t imagine manhood without dominance. Like for some reason in their minds women can escape their gender norms and make a new definition of what gender is for themselves but men can’t.
My cishet dad has often told me that he found feminist theory to be very freeing. It told him that yes men can be gentle and caring. Yes men can be sensitive. Being a man means what you want it to mean.
I’ve met other cishet men that feel the same way. I really do like talking with cis men about gender sometimes. You really see them become a lot happier when they fully internalize the idea that being a man means whatever they want it to mean.
You get told a lot as a man “real men do or don’t do xyz”. I’ve even experienced this as a trans man.
but the “real man” is an impossible standard to achieve. He doesn’t exist. He’s a mythical being to strive towards. You will never be him and trying to be him will trap you in a cage.
If you think that masculinity is a prison, what you need to realize is that the bars are unlocked and there are no guards. You’ve been talked into your cage like an elephant on a string and you can open the door at any time.
And if you’re into women and worried about what women will think if you’re not “manly enough”, my question to you is, why would you settle for someone who wants to talk you back into your cage?
Yes, this. I was just thinking about all this the other day. And if I may, I think understanding why masculinity feels like a weird idealized cage is very important to understanding how to take true ownership of it.
People struggle with understanding what masculinity is because of what you said: They confuse masculinity with violence. Namely, they confuse the condition of "being a man" with the condition of "being a warrior."
A man is many things. He's a father, a son, a brother, a best friend, a lover, a thinker, a doer, and a dreamer. He can be goofy and serious, passionate and bored, courageous and cowardly. He can live a quiet life and an adventurous one. But most importantly, he can change how he expresses himself whenever he pleases.
A warrior can't do these things.
War is a theater that asks people "Are you a soldier, or are you a civilian?" You can determine this by looking at people's behavior: Who is fighting, and who is running/hiding/trying to stay safe?
While someone can do a mix of these things, there's a very clear line between "warrior" and "not warrior" when it comes to who gets sent to the battlefields. Warriors are trained to fight. Warriors are conditioned with a specific mindset. Warriors have certain skills, know certain protocols, and operate within a specific environment. Most of all, warriors react to situations in very strict, impersonal, and calculated ways. There's no room for personal expression, there's no place for unconventional ideas, and there's absolutely no getting overwhelmed with emotion. You respond with your training so you and your comrades don't die. That's it.
Now the question is: Why did we conflate our definition of "being a man" with the definition of "being at war"? Personally, I think the World Wars had something to do with it.
Before the Wars, a man was a man because he was a gentleman: He was civil and good-mannered. He knew how to exercise his education. He was articulate, expressive, social, well-behaved, and interested in human cooperation. This is what made him masculine as opposed to his unmanly opposite—an oaf. (Think of the cultured and successful Dr. Jekyll and the slovenly and impulsive Mr. Hyde.)
But then the Wars came. Multiple generations of men went to the battlefield and experienced manhood as the condition of being a soldier. When the Wars ended, they brought this wartime experience of manhood back to the civilian world, passing it down to their children and grandchildren as a narrative of "what a man is and does."
Now we have a problem where we feel like we have to live in conflict-filled environments in order to feel like we're men. The wartime definition of masculinity is beholden to the presence of war. Without it, it's not possible for us to meet the standard that was handed down to us. It feels both unobtainable AND caging because it was created in an environment that no longer exists, and in ones famous for destroying the human spirit.
The men who went through the World Wars sacrificed being men so they could be warriors. They had to give up their ability to holistically express themselves and direct their own self-development in order to become the assets they needed to be. They didn't come back as whole people.
We know "being a man" is different from "being a warrior" because masculinity can exist where war can't: In gentle times of peace, beauty, love, and tranquility. If you don't feel comfortable being gentle, peaceful, beautiful, loving, and/or tranquil because you feel "less of a man" for it, then you have received this wound. It's time to heal it.
I've noticed a trend on Reddit where people claim that Odin isn't fighting his fate; I'd like to know if you've seen any similar comments and what you think. This idea is frequently accompanied by the claim that the Norse people saw their gods as entirely good and the jötnar as entirely evil. I feel like this take lacks nuance on how the gods were actually seen, seeing as we don’t really have much in general, let alone about how the Norse viewed good and bad. Never mind the questionable use of etymology in terms of the words “good” and “evil,” because just because Old Norse had words that roughly translate to that doesn’t mean the underlying conceptual framework is the same, and the words in English are heavily influenced by Christianity, but this seems to be ignored in terms of the fact that the Christian view on good and evil has changed significantly over the last 1,000 years.
I know I’m essentially asking two different questions, but the reason these two things seem to be intertwined is because these people are trying to justify everything the gods did as being viewed as good simply because they protected humans, and even though they did things like chaining Fenrisúlfr and raping women, it wouldn’t have been viewed as wrong but simply as something that Odin had to do because of fate. I see a problem with this because I don't think we'll ever really know whether the Norse people would have seen their gods' actions as purely good and treated them as benevolent deities simply because they protected them. I suspect that this idea is heavily influenced by Christian dualism, which is not being acknowledged, and I recall instances in the sagas where the gods were not viewed favorably, despite being worshiped. This doesn’t even include local beliefs in spirits who definitely weren’t viewed as purely good and who are mostly ignored in contemporary paganism in my experience. Hopefully, this makes sense.
I've had a hard time responding to this because it seems inadequate to just call it incorrect and move on. It's incorrect in a way that I think can give us some insight into the risks of reconstructed religion and the responsibilities that come with taking them on. I have a lot more to say about this, and have repeatedly started and stopped trying to say it in the drafts of this post, but that isn't what you're asking me to do, and I should save it for another time.
What I'll say briefly is that I've long had concerns that, as a modern religion still in an early development stage (if we're optimistic about its future), the foundation of heathenry is being formed in the context of social media that hijacks our need for community and redirects it to serve corporate interests to our detriment. I think the arguments you're seeing rise to the surface, not necessarily by anyone's conscious choice, for their fitness in an argumentative social media environment. They're not only good at shutting down arguments because of the asymmetry involved (it takes a lot more work for me to make the claims I did in my bullet points below), they also maintain an amount of exclusivity because few people would want to take these positions because they suck (if you think this is what heathenry is, the obvious choice is to just not be heathen… nobody is making you). I really do not have the capacity to believe that someone else believes the meanings of the words "good" and "evil" have been exactly consistent for their entire existence and someone who says they believe that is lying, possibly including to themselves.
I already linked it below but I'm gonna highlight a recommendation for the paper "De Natura Deorum: A Few Theses on Gods and Pantheons" by Jan A. Kozák.
Anyway here's my bullet-pointed actual response:
There was never a single, cohesive "Old Norse religion," but a broad spectrum of beliefs that differed regionally and probably along gender and economic lines, so at best any blanket statements about Norse religion generally are limited in scope. Clearly certain features would have been common throughout, but that has to be argued for and not assumed.
sub-point to the previous: the preservation of the myths that we still have record of was influenced by a Norwegian warrior aristocracy that we shouldn't assume to be representative of the entire medieval Nordic world.
sub-sub-point: the only place other than Saxo (who I'll remind you was not even attempting to relay mythology accurately, and who hated the gods almost as much as he hated women) that we get any reference to an abusive relationship between Óðinn and Rindr is in a praise poem for either Sigurðr jarl or Hákon jarl, the latter of whom was in fact a mass rapist as he believed he was entitled to be by his office of king, so this claim of an ontological buffer between the world of myth and the actual real world falls pretty fucking flat. Heathens like Hákon jarl because he was the last bastion of heathenry in Norway and don't have the guts to face the fact that because of him it died without honor. Sorry if that's cheesy but I don't know how else to say it.
We have basically no idea what people thought about the myths. There is good reason to doubt that the mythic genre approach to the gods was how they thought of them in other contexts.
The gods disagree with each other in myths all the time so I don't know how anyone squares that with the idea that they are all only capable of good. How were Óðinn and Þórr both doing good when they went tit-for-tat alternately blessing and cursing Starkaðr?
We have only a kind of weak idea of what anyone thought about the gods at all, and then nearly only for the land-owning elite, and all of this needs to be taken critically due to the time between the events described and their recording.
Norse people were capable of recognizing things as "good" and "evil" (or maybe we should just say "bad") but it's extremely doubtful that these were fundamental and unchangeable principles, and if we're to take seriously the claim that Norse religion was animistic then we should understand good and evil as emerging from negotiable relationalities rather than prior to it.
I know this is beating a dead horse but Þorvaldr holbarki worshiped Surtr. The recon crisis-avoidance response is that it was propitiation rather than worship but if we're "orthoprax not orthodox" (which might not be a given, but I'm used to people treating it like it is) then there's no real difference that matters.
The theme of unintentionally bringing about prophecy in the attempt to avoid it recurs throughout Norse literature and there's no reason to doubt that it's exactly what it looks like.
Rape is always wrong with no exceptions and a religion that says otherwise is a bad religion that you shouldn't practice.
The reason why I have to reframe holistic knowledge into logical frameworks is because I'll end up saying shit like "To gain the knowledge you seek, you must go to the fields of the mind and listen to the rivers that run there. They'll tell you the answers." And people will go "Wow man, that's some real crossroads wizardshit right there." And I'll go, "I can't emphasize enough that this is a laundry-list of literal tasks you do and not some kind of riddle."
I'm actually quite insecure about not being understood. It's what really makes this field especially hard for me, because this fear means I constantly reframe everything about spirituality according to what makes sense to the logical brain.
But understanding things like spirituality, spirit-work, and magic isn't done through logic, data, facts, and figures. Hell, it's not even done through faith or belief.
Our logical ways of thinking live in the left side of the brain, which deals with facts and figures. It understands the world through frameworks like "Tom is a man. All men are mortal. Therefore Tom is mortal," or "1+1=2," or "B is the second letter in the alphabet." It's also the part of the brain that thinks using language.
Then there's the right side of the brain, which deals with holistic thinking. It understands the world through feelings—not "feelings" as in emotions, per se, but "feelings" as in "anything felt." This includes spatial perception, movement, direction, distance, velocity, and any other measurement of change.
It feels these things by mirroring the sensation of them in the body.
This is also how we know what someone's feeling when they don't tell us. We mirror their emotional state. It's also how we experience abstract movements such as "the pacing of conversations," or "the emotional distance between people," or "the weight of a given situation."
And—if I were to be so bold as to say this—it's also how we know when we're talking to deities and spirits. This mirroring has certain dynamics when it interacts with intelligent beings.
Anyway, you learn and know certain things about the world from this mirror-mechanic that you can't learn or know through logic or reason. But this is a non-verbal part of the brain that understands things through feeling and abstract motions, so when you try to put it to language it sounds like poetry.
