wordsmithic

Greek writer ✦ Greek Cultural Sensitivity Readings ( Fiverr (link) or dm me on Tumblr) ✦ WIP: The Other Evil (link)

[balkansoul-deactivated20220924]

love how tumblr staff has time to censor words like “paint mixing” and “my face” and yet they can’t get rid of ssexsophie8127 thats been liking my posts from 2017

[ssexsophie8127]

fuck you

[ssexsophie8127]

i won

[ravioliet]

similarly to how you should never trust gamers with a nonbinary character i feel like you can also never trust a fandom with an aroace character. whether it's explicitly canon or implied it just ends up the same

[ravioliet]

every time an allo person wants to ship an aroace spec coded character they should write an essay with MLA format citations on how this serves the themes of the story and is necessary for the character and how their ship is any different than the relationships said character already has and they should also send $500 dollars minimum to at least one aroace person in their fandom

[ravioliet]

"but people can do whatever they want!!!" i don't caaaaaare go examine your biases and cry about it or i'm blowing both of us up

[lavendertarot]

> go to an online space

> ask the people there whether their resources are international or just for americans

> they laugh and say "they're good resources sir"

> they're for americans

[birdplushie]

really funny to me whenever people are like "there's no way these characters are JUST friends they're always SMILING at each other" like i'm no expert on this but i'm pretty sure that might be in the top 3 things people do in a friendship. i hear sometimes people even do it with strangers and acquaintances......

[loveridden1999]

[bundibird]

I'm gonna be honest for a second. I cant believe people still care about Taylor swift.

[witha-boxofscraps]

This CANNOT be left in the tags you came with RECEIPTS

[bundibird]

Sorry, @akinari-kashihara , she invited who the fuck to her wedding??

[akinari-kashihara]

Hi sorry

Taylor Swift fans ‘sickened’ after ICE contractor attends wedding

The contractor's company is responsible for running ICE's largest detention centre.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

starting the countdown until gaylors start saying that Adam Sandler officiating Taylor's wedding (sorry if this is how you found out) is actually proof that it's a sham because it's a reference to I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007), in which Sandler and Kevin James play heterosexual men who enter a mutually beneficial fake gay marriage, a dynamic that Taylor is inverting as a queer woman pretending to be straight while cleverly flagging the obvious farce to those with the eyes to see

[hecatea]

this is worst than finding out from a castiel meme

[afusionoffandoms]

Turkey to imprison LGBT advocates, criminalize same-sex ceremonies in new bill: report - Stockholm Center for Freedom

Turkey’s justice ministry is drafting legislation that would imprison people for publicly praising LGBT identity, criminalize same-sex engag

[bisexualantagonist]

EXTRA INFO:

The Bill hasn't passed yet; however it is very likely. Turkey just shut down the social media accounts of LGBT+ organizations, and quietly banned/"made not possible to see" multiple dating apps for LGBT people such as Taimi. These are small steps leading up to this. Just less than a year ago the distribution of Estrogen was made ten times harder and hormone replacement therapy laws upped the transitioning age from 18 to 21. Please speak for us.

[madphantom]

You know, there's this cliché that teenage boys always eat massive amounts, but teenage girls really aren't that different if they're not suppressed by diet culture and body shaming. Like, I was a teenage girl who frankly just stopped bothering to fit into mainstream beauty ideals at some point, and I would regularly make myself just one big massive pot of pasta and devour it completely. This wasn't even stress eating or anything, I just genuinely needed the energy because you know, I was a teenager and my body was developing. I feel like so many teenage girls think they need to eat as little as possible to be petite and pretty, but the truth is that your body is developing just as intensely as teenage boys' bodies. Eat more, please, your body needs it.

[wordsmithic]

PSA for non-Greek Hellenic Polytheists:

Pssst! You know you can use the Greek names of the Greek gods, right? I'm not talking about ancient Greek. I'm talking about contemporary, spoken Greek. You know the names still exist in Greek. Right....?

Not only the ancient names for figures and terms have remained exactly the same for the most part, but also they're not worse, disrespectful, or "less formal". They are literally the Greek names of the gods/heroes/creatures/terminology today.

You don't have to address these figures the way our people did more than two thousand years ago. Millions of living Greeks today still speak the names of the Greek gods. In the Greek language.

I understand that the versions you use can depend on the resources available to you. And it's fine if you only know the ancient ones, or you only want to use those. But I'd like to make you aware that you don't have to be stuck in 300 BCE linguistically.

Not even the Greek language itself is stuck in 300 BCE! In fact, by 299 BCE, our language had already slightly changed from the year prior, and it continues to do so every year for... well, for a few thousand years at this point.

Ancient names make sense when one uses them in academic contexts, in the study of ancient Greek society and religion. But this religion and culture don't exist in a vacuum inside your history books. This linguistic stagnation in everyday life, though, is part of the centuries-long Western European / American obsession with seeing the Greek culture and language like something divorced from the real world.

There's no particular justification that demands you use the ancient versions in modern informal settings. On the contrary, why not address the Greek gods in the current form of the Greek language?

So if you want to use contemporary Greek, go wild. Use -ες ending instead of -αι. Go full iotacism. Use Έριδα not Έρις, Μοίρες not Μοίραι, Χάρη not Χάρις, Κάθαρση not Κάθαρσις. The differences are minuscule. And - let's be honest - you were not using ancient and modern Greek grammar (like the Greek cases, which depend on the sentence meaning) properly anyway.

[alatismeni-theitsa]

I should add that using ancient Greek terms while there are contemporary ones, looks weird to a Greek. It’s somewhat like choosing to use only horses for transportation because you have not heard about cars. And, in this analogy, the Greek mind goes: but... have you not... heard of... cars... Why horses....

But, like OP said, foreigners using the ancient versions is not considered an offense. Sometimes this is what's most accessible. And of course, one can have other words for the names of the Greek gods in their language. It would be ridiculous to hold such a thing against them.

At the same time, it's good for people to know that Greek language with its names and tems is still around and happy to be of use!

[bodhi-devotee]

“This linguistic stagnation in everyday life, though, is part of the centuries-long Western European / American obsession with seeing the Greek culture and language like something divorced from the real world.”

this statement and bias is something non-greek hellenic polytheists (like myself) must always keep in mind. we are far, far from interacting with a “dead” culture. it is vibrant and deserving of our attention and respect.

this webpage i found goes through a lot of the god’s modern spellings and pronunciations. anyone can let me know if there’s a more accurate resource!

[wordsmithic]

Hi @bodhi-devotee ! This is a fairly good source, a good start, but I have some minor objections. I'll list them for everyone who's curious:

The first one is how the article neglects to mention that αί/αι is not an AY sound but an EH sound. Which is pretty odd because this has been in effect for more than two thousand years now.

Examples: Aristaios - (Aristaeus; Gr. Ἀρισταῖος, ΑΡΙΣΤΑΙΟΣ) is not pronounced ah-rees-TAY-ohs, but as ah-rees-TEH-ohs.

&

Daimôn is not pronounced DAY-mohn, but DEH-mon. (Same logic as the English word "Demon" which came from Greek)

Demeter is not Δημήτηρ today but Δήμητρα (THEE-meet-rah) , and it's not uncommon to find Greek people with that name, either feminine or masculine.

Moerae should not be this, but Mοίρες (MEE-rehs). Mousai should be Mouses and pronounced MOO-sehs, and Nýmphai (NEEM-fay) should be Νύμφες - NEEM-fehs. No feminine word in plural ends in -αι nowadays.

Also no one says Orphéfs for the last few centuries. It should be Oρφέας - or-FEH-ahs

Phýsis should be actually Phýsi (FEE-see)

Poseidóhn/Poseidôn is not wrong but it still has that archaic vibe. If you want to go full contemporary, try Poseidóhnas/Poseidônas (Ποσειδώνας - poh-see-DOHN-ahs)

Lastly, I would not suggest the ee-HEE-ah pronunciation for Hygeia/Yyeia/Υγεία. I would suggest ee-YEE-ah, since English has this specific γ sound (same as in "yeeeet!").

On a final note, I saw this blogger uses the word "Hellenismos" to describe the Greek ancient religion (like many other non-Greeks). That's not advisable, as Greeks have been using it for centuries to describe our nation/ethnicity. "Hellenismos" in Greek describes our people, in our land and abroad. Anyone who wants to learn more can read this comprehensive post about it.

Now, as the Greek saying goes, "opinions are like assholes: everyone's got one". So I'm going to briefly give mine.

The site says: Julian (332-364 CE) was the last Roman emperor who loved the Gods. He endeavored to rule as a philosopher-king and attempted to revive philosophy and the worship of the Gods. It was Julian who used the word Hellenismos to identify the ancient Greek religion in contrast to the new religion, Christianity. This use of the word eventually became commonplace.

My commentary: No Greek for the last thousand years or so would ever use "Hellenismos" for our ancient religion, because our reference point is the will of our people, and not the action of an emperor and a brief popularization of the term. We choose wether to give it importance or not in naming our people's ancient religion. I cannot emphasize enough how absurd is for an outsider to come and claim the name of our nation as the name of their religion because one emperor more than a thousand years ago popularized that name for a while. If we wanted to, we Greeks would have used the term for the religion.

(Besides, if I'm not mistaken, the specific Hellenismos as practiced in the days of Julian was not what the ancient Greek religion was at its height, and not what today's polytheists are practicing. But people can look this up.)

Anyway, thanks for your time, dear readers! Maybe I'll try to find or make a more comprehensive source myself someday! For now, I hope this post had been proven useful.

[wrigglewormz]

I'm perfectly fine with people criticizing my favorite stories and frequently do it myself but can you stop being so boring about it

[wrigglewormz]

"This scene made me so uncomfortable" given the subject matter, it would be really, really badly written if it wasn't.

[theorahsart]

A comic about book bans, ppl's continued dismissiveness of asexuality, and ppl's lack of understanding around what it means to be queer, and why they should be worried about book bannings.

I'll add smth here cos I learned after posting this on IG that people still aren't entirely understanding how scary and dangerous this is. Ppl kept saying to me 'I can still buy your book in shops though' or 'Its okay, I'll order your book into my library!'

I dont give af about my book lol No one outside of Ace ppl ever read it, its yearly sales don't even cover a month of expenses for me.

The thing you should all be concerned about is that a totally benign unheard of book about someone's every day life is being banned. And those laws listed above are passing through US government right now. One of those laws would make it so that any teacher/librarian in the US could lose their job/go to prison for simply sharing 'ideology'- and I don't mean only lgbtq folk, these laws are attacking black history, civil rights history, disability rep in books. Just talking about these things will now legally be considered a 'dangerous ideology'.

And once that's set into law, the US government has backing via law to go ahead and say 'if these books aren't legally allowed in schools, then they shouldn't be allowed in shops, either.' And from there it sets up a great argument for 'The dangerous content in these books is lawfully being removed from public, shouldn't we be lawfully removing the people living out/promoting this ideology too?'

I can see why ppl don't fully understand how dangerous book bannings are, if they're not familiar with the history of fascism. If you're interested, there are plenty of graphic novels that share this history via first hand accounts- Maus, Persepolis, Banned Book Club.

But guess what? You're on limited time to get these via libraries...cos all three of these books are on banned lists too, and they got nothing to do with lgbtq rep, and everything to do with warning ppl about fascism.

And the US government knows it can get away with this, because they are passing these laws as we speak and barely anyone is doing anything about it or talking about it. I've been trying to talk about it for years and no one does anything except say to me 'don't worry, I'll buy your book!' or say its a badge of honour that I have a banned book.

So I'll emphasise once more. If you live in the USA, PLEASE CONTACT YOUR REP ABOUT THESE LAWS!

[deerman-limerence]

@sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog

[alatismeni-theitsa]

Nolan's Odyssey & The Western View of Greek Culture

New mandatory-viewing video for the lovers of Greek myth and ancient Greek religion just dropped! If you're going to watch one video about how the West has mistreated Greek culture and people, let it be this!

It's an extremely informative and comprehensive essay by a non-Greek who knows the culture from the inside and has studied the historical trends of cultural misappropriation surrounding the West and Greek myths.

If you are not familiar with this issue, I promise you will emerge much wiser and more respectful from this viewing.

[wordsmithic]

PSA for non-Greek Hellenic Polytheists:

Pssst! You know you can use the Greek names of the Greek gods, right? I'm not talking about ancient Greek. I'm talking about contemporary, spoken Greek. You know the names still exist in Greek. Right....?

Not only the ancient names for figures and terms have remained exactly the same for the most part, but also they're not worse, disrespectful, or "less formal". They are literally the Greek names of the gods/heroes/creatures/terminology today.

You don't have to address these figures the way our people did more than two thousand years ago. Millions of living Greeks today still speak the names of the Greek gods. In the Greek language.

I understand that the versions you use can depend on the resources available to you. And it's fine if you only know the ancient ones, or you only want to use those. But I'd like to make you aware that you don't have to be stuck in 300 BCE linguistically.

Not even the Greek language itself is stuck in 300 BCE! In fact, by 299 BCE, our language had already slightly changed from the year prior, and it continues to do so every year for... well, for a few thousand years at this point.

Ancient names make sense when one uses them in academic contexts, in the study of ancient Greek society and religion. But this religion and culture don't exist in a vacuum inside your history books. This linguistic stagnation in everyday life, though, is part of the centuries-long Western European / American obsession with seeing the Greek culture and language like something divorced from the real world.

There's no particular justification that demands you use the ancient versions in modern informal settings. On the contrary, why not address the Greek gods in the current form of the Greek language?

So if you want to use contemporary Greek, go wild. Use -ες ending instead of -αι. Go full iotacism. Use Έριδα not Έρις, Μοίρες not Μοίραι, Χάρη not Χάρις, Κάθαρση not Κάθαρσις. The differences are minuscule. And - let's be honest - you were not using ancient and modern Greek grammar (like the Greek cases, which depend on the sentence meaning) properly anyway.

[alatismeni-theitsa]

I should add that using ancient Greek terms while there are contemporary ones, looks weird to a Greek. It’s somewhat like choosing to use only horses for transportation because you have not heard about cars. And, in this analogy, the Greek mind goes: but... have you not... heard of... cars... Why horses....

But, like OP said, foreigners using the ancient versions is not considered an offense. Sometimes this is what's most accessible. And of course, one can have other words for the names of the Greek gods in their language. It would be ridiculous to hold such a thing against them.

At the same time, it's good for people to know that Greek language with its names and tems is still around and happy to be of use!

[bodhi-devotee]

“This linguistic stagnation in everyday life, though, is part of the centuries-long Western European / American obsession with seeing the Greek culture and language like something divorced from the real world.”

this statement and bias is something non-greek hellenic polytheists (like myself) must always keep in mind. we are far, far from interacting with a “dead” culture. it is vibrant and deserving of our attention and respect.

this webpage i found goes through a lot of the god’s modern spellings and pronunciations. anyone can let me know if there’s a more accurate resource!

[wordsmithic]

Hi @bodhi-devotee ! This is a fairly good source, a good start, but I have some minor objections. I'll list them for everyone who's curious:

The first one is how the article neglects to mention that αί/αι is not an AY sound but an EH sound. Which is pretty odd because this has been in effect for more than two thousand years now.

Examples: Aristaios - (Aristaeus; Gr. Ἀρισταῖος, ΑΡΙΣΤΑΙΟΣ) is not pronounced ah-rees-TAY-ohs, but as ah-rees-TEH-ohs.

&

Daimôn is not pronounced DAY-mohn, but DEH-mon. (Same logic as the English word "Demon" which came from Greek)

Demeter is not Δημήτηρ today but Δήμητρα (THEE-meet-rah) , and it's not uncommon to find Greek people with that name, either feminine or masculine.

Moerae should not be this, but Mοίρες (MEE-rehs). Mousai should be Mouses and pronounced MOO-sehs, and Nýmphai (NEEM-fay) should be Νύμφες - NEEM-fehs. No feminine word in plural ends in -αι nowadays.

Also no one says Orphéfs for the last few centuries. It should be Oρφέας - or-FEH-ahs

Phýsis should be actually Phýsi (FEE-see)

Poseidóhn/Poseidôn is not wrong but it still has that archaic vibe. If you want to go full contemporary, try Poseidóhnas/Poseidônas (Ποσειδώνας - poh-see-DOHN-ahs)

Lastly, I would not suggest the ee-HEE-ah pronunciation for Hygeia/Yyeia/Υγεία. I would suggest ee-YEE-ah, since English has this specific γ sound (same as in "yeeeet!").

On a final note, I saw this blogger uses the word "Hellenismos" to describe the Greek ancient religion (like many other non-Greeks). That's not advisable, as Greeks have been using it for centuries to describe our nation/ethnicity. "Hellenismos" in Greek describes our people, in our land and abroad. Anyone who wants to learn more can read this comprehensive post about it.

Now, as the Greek saying goes, "opinions are like assholes: everyone's got one". So I'm going to briefly give mine.

The site says: Julian (332-364 CE) was the last Roman emperor who loved the Gods. He endeavored to rule as a philosopher-king and attempted to revive philosophy and the worship of the Gods. It was Julian who used the word Hellenismos to identify the ancient Greek religion in contrast to the new religion, Christianity. This use of the word eventually became commonplace.

My commentary: No Greek for the last thousand years or so would ever use "Hellenismos" for our ancient religion, because our reference point is the will of our people, and not the action of an emperor and a brief popularization of the term. We choose wether to give it importance or not in naming our people's ancient religion. I cannot emphasize enough how absurd is for an outsider to come and claim the name of our nation as the name of their religion because one emperor more than a thousand years ago popularized that name for a while. If we wanted to, we Greeks would have used the term for the religion.

(Besides, if I'm not mistaken, the specific Hellenismos as practiced in the days of Julian was not what the ancient Greek religion was at its height, and not what today's polytheists are practicing. But people can look this up.)

Anyway, thanks for your time, dear readers! Maybe I'll try to find or make a more comprehensive source myself someday! For now, I hope this post had been proven useful.

[wordsmithic]

PSA for non-Greek Hellenic Polytheists:

Pssst! You know you can use the Greek names of the Greek gods, right? I'm not talking about ancient Greek. I'm talking about contemporary, spoken Greek. You know the names still exist in Greek. Right....?

Not only the ancient names for figures and terms have remained exactly the same for the most part, but also they're not worse, disrespectful, or "less formal". They are literally the Greek names of the gods/heroes/creatures/terminology today.

You don't have to address these figures the way our people did more than two thousand years ago. Millions of living Greeks today still speak the names of the Greek gods. In the Greek language.

I understand that the versions you use can depend on the resources available to you. And it's fine if you only know the ancient ones, or you only want to use those. But I'd like to make you aware that you don't have to be stuck in 300 BCE linguistically.

Not even the Greek language itself is stuck in 300 BCE! In fact, by 299 BCE, our language had already slightly changed from the year prior, and it continues to do so every year for... well, for a few thousand years at this point.

Ancient names make sense when one uses them in academic contexts, in the study of ancient Greek society and religion. But this religion and culture don't exist in a vacuum inside your history books. This linguistic stagnation in everyday life, though, is part of the centuries-long Western European / American obsession with seeing the Greek culture and language like something divorced from the real world.

There's no particular justification that demands you use the ancient versions in modern informal settings. On the contrary, why not address the Greek gods in the current form of the Greek language?

So if you want to use contemporary Greek, go wild. Use -ες ending instead of -αι. Go full iotacism. Use Έριδα not Έρις, Μοίρες not Μοίραι, Χάρη not Χάρις, Κάθαρση not Κάθαρσις. The differences are minuscule. And - let's be honest - you were not using ancient and modern Greek grammar (like the Greek cases, which depend on the sentence meaning) properly anyway.

[animentality]

Link to the gay porn library of Alexandria.

Happy pride.

[rivers-thoughts]

This is actually super cool from a media preservation stand point!!

[insidestory1]

When you tell someone about being mistreated because of your disability, there is a common response that goes something along the lines of, "But did you explain to them properly why you can't do x thing?" "Did you make sure they understood why you need x accomodation?" "Maybe they just didn't understand?"

For example: "Did you properly explain that the reason you don't do hugs is because of your autism?" or "Maybe they don't really understand how bad fibro fatigue is and that's why they got upset at you for concelling plans."

I hate these kind of responses. They give me the same vibe as being asked, "Yeah, but what were you wearing when you got catcalled?" They put the responsability for the problem onto the person who was discriminated against, instead of the one doing the discriminating. Disabled people should not be expected to go through grueling explanations or justify their needs before those needs are respected.