The salt impersonated

The Enigma of Amigara Fault

This short story by Junji Ito is about a fault that appears in Amigara mountain after an earthquake. The earthquake exposes countless human-shaped holes in the mountain which seem to have been made about a thousand years ago. People, intrigued by these  silhouettes, gather at the site and that’s when things get creepy.

Instead of a cutesie reference to film censorship it was an explicit statement of defiance of Maryland's criminalization gay sex, which was not repealed until 2002. This wasn't a guy saying "Oh they can't put what I do in the movies according to a completely voluntary industry code" he was saying "The State of Maryland wants to put me in jail for being gay and having gay sex."

I didn't see a dentist again until this week because I've been transient/homeless the whole time & freelance writing is continuously degrading to pay functionally less than minimum wage with huge gaps without work because of algorithmic, AI corporate bullshit. It's BAD.

If you can help, my venmo is MirandaBrave. Here is my ko-fi (but it takes a fee). If we're mutuals, I'll give you my PayPal email. My friends helped me get my current low income apartment & thought I'd survive the year, but these costs mean I won't without help. I'm happy to beta or edit fic, be a sage of smut if you struggle with that in your writing, or any other thing you can think of if you give $50+.

Below is proof of my cost estimate for the work I need this month (about $5k), but I have to have laser treatments at least every three months essentially forever, but especially this first year of treatment, or I will lose most of my bottom teeth where the retainer was cemented. They're also concerned that the infection has caused damage to my health in other ways. I have no signs of oral cancer, but I do have several signs that it hit my bloodstream and was damaging my immune system and potentially my heart.

(Spoilers.) After watching it a handful of times, mulling over my thoughts and reading the opinions of my peers, I've come to the amazing digital conclusion that: I thought it was fine. Obviously I cried after watching it for the first time and every subsequent rewatch has led me to get emotional over it. But, that is more a culmination of my feeling for the show rather than anything that happened in the last episode.

Overall, I think it is well animated, wonderfully scored and ends off on a nice note. (As a fanfic writer, I really like the vibe of post canon.)

Writing/plot wise, I have some more complicated thoughts

Pomni is an everyman protagonist. That's why she feels like a blank stare, she kind of is.

The everyman trope is basically a character that can be plain enough to be kind of relatable. Due to our current cultural norms, that includes trying to generally do the right thing.

Jax's purpose on the story was to be a cautionary tale. Pomni also has a role, and that is to be our eyes into the circus.

That being said, that doesn't negate your critique, people are free to think it is 1) A boring trope 2) Not a trope to have for your protagonist at least.

As I work more into analyzing this show for fanfics reasons, the more I realize Gooseworx was working on this as a story, while many of us were expecting a world.

mushroom: can you feel your heart burning? can you feel the struggle within? the fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make. you cannot kill me in a way that matters

Just say "elemental construct" or something.

Magic caster created golem? That's a magical construct.

Naturally occurring golem? That's an elemental.

-

A setting without Jews by definition cannot have golems.

In the present the reader is introduced to Alice Cohen as she receives her inheritance from her recently deceased grandmother. This inheritance consists of a lone house in an area of Brooklyn where all the other buildings have been torn down. One of the first things that Alice discovers is a walled off section in the basement from which a voice calls to her to read stories. Alice's first choice for this is her grandmother's diary.

^ small excerpt

It just fucking fits. It’s so easy. I’m not remotely Jewish by any definition of the word, so I cannot speak for anybody, but instead I offer you this very practical taken on “golem.”

Let’s say you hear conflicting takes by Jewish folk on whether or not you can use “golem.” Some say you can, some say you can’t.

Rather than making it a moral matter — consider, some folks asked you not to and said it sucks, and you know they’ve got a fair argument even if you don’t agree with it. Since it’s so easy to not do, why not just, not be a dick?

If you want to look at it not as a moral matter, but look in purely practical terms, by refusing the request to call it anything else, it’s bein’ a bit of a dick.

Not because I have anything against Judaism in particular.

Not because I'm particularly attached to "golem" as a term.

No, it's because this is a stupid hill to die on.

Fantasy steals. It appropriates. It uses familiar terms so that people don't have to check a glossary to keep track of a bunch of terms that they won't remember because every piece of media out there is suddenly making up their own words for shit. And you know what? Fantasy steals from everyone, without prejudice. The only qualifier is that the word be well enough known that people will know what you're talking about.

So, if anything, having your word used as a general fantasy term means that your myth was considered recognizable enough to be used for clarity.

"you'll be neither the first nor the last to find a fantasy work sacrilegious."

I see it as potentially one-directional. It's okay if it's a marginalized culture using myths and folklore from the marginalizing cultures -- you wanted me to assimilate, buddy! But the other way is just ... no.

It's not that I think it's sacrilegious, I think it's cultural appropriation! Those are different!

The golem in particular is deeply rooted in Jewish persecution and fantasies of escape from that, and erasing that context and making it into some vague Thing is...not cool. The golem is fundamentally a Jewish fantasy that Jews told about people hating Jews. You cannot remove it from this context. There are no golems without Jews. Not fantasy knockoff Jews, but Jews.

People don't actually WANT Jews in the 'melting pot' nor do they actually believe in the melting pot. They want what Jews create and build but the only "melting pot" they really want Jews to get into is a crematorium after they take everything we made that they like, because they are entitled to it by virtue of THEM being human and us being... Not/and/or directly comparable to christian hegemony. Exotic enough to fetishize, then inhuman enough to throw on the garbage heap of history and then fear like a boogeyman after not all of us die. It's deeply ironic that 10 years ago people pretended to care about Golems in D&D and Goblins in harry potter being antisemetic while remaining silent about the venomous rising Jew-Hate in progressive and also fandom spaces as they expanded along the fandom-cult model. Now they don't even have to pretend about their hobbies with Jews! It's THEIR colonized space! They Took These Things. It's theirs.

That’s the opposite of a golem. In fact, if you read a story about the Golem of Prague where the Golem goes mad and kills too many people leading to its unmaking - that’s a Christian telling of the Golem story (“those crafty jooos protected themselves too much!” -Christians, probably)

Golems are protectors, exclusively.

It should surprise nobody that said author was Terry "people as things, that's where it starts" Pratchett.

In the first of his golem stories, Feet of Clay, we see a golem named Dorfl (interesting how that's not a real name but does look so similar to Yiddish) go "no, actually, I will not be your mindless slave, I have my own thoughts and feelings thank you" and then like...basically brute-force his way into freedom.

Oh look--it's Jews.

Later we see various factions in Ankh-Morpork arguing over golems--should they have full rights? No rights? Some rights? Are they people?

Oh look--it's Jews.

The denouement is in Making Money, when Moist Von Lipwig's girlfriend Adora Belle "Spike" Dearheart makes contact with what she believes to be ancient golden golems, only to discover the sacred text she translated included a word that can be translated as either "gold" or "thousands." These golems turn up in Ankh-Morpork, still following their ancient "defend" command. Neighboring cities get very upset about Ankh-Morpork harboring Je--I mean, ancient golems. In fact, in spite of the fact that the golems are just sitting there being a defensive wall and minding their own business, other cities are declaring them an act of war. (Gee, where have I heard this before?)

And so Moist (funny how much that sounds like "Moshe," isn't it?) figures out the ritual of the ancient priests who made them and commands them to go to a land of their own, underground.

OH LOOK--

There are no actual Jews in Discworld, which is (imo) fine because it is a flat world on the back of four elephants riding on a giant turtle through space and there aren't any people from any other actual religions either.

Except there kind of are Jews. They're golems, and their entire storyline mirrors actual real-world Jewish oppression and problems, right down to a neat little twist where Moist declares that the Ankh-Morpork dollar will be based on a golem standard instead of a gold standard because [okay his explanation is actually kind of word salad but it's pretty clear the intention is "labor is worth more than a chunk of random metal"]. Why is that cool? Because it turns the "Jews are greedy bankers" stereotype on its head. The golems Moist is basing this on are the original golems, the ones whose entire job is "protect." They get no benefit from the dollar. They don't know what a dollar is. They speak an extinct language known only to scholars (oh so you mean like Aramaic, an ancient language of the--). They literally could not care less about the Ankh-Morpork economy. They exist outside of it. And yet, the whole thing is made to rest on them--much as Jews became bankers and tax collectors centuries ago because they got no benefit from the king, but had to do his bidding or risk pogroms and death. Which is what these golems were facing.

Pterry used a Jewish creature to tell a Jewish story--not as set dressing. And he very clearly understood what he was doing and did it with respect--not perfectly, but pretty damn solidly.

when fantasy authors look to real world (western) occult/esoteric/magical ideas, they are overwhelmingly going to find appropriated and distorted jewish ideas. from its foundations in antiquity, the major streams of western esoteric thought appropriate heavily from judaism, jewish mysticism, and (once it was established as a distinct practise in later centuries) kabbalah.

perhaps there could be room for some discussion of syncretism when you consider ancient philosophers and esotericists held jewish mystics in some kind of esteem as men of wisdom and education, but that argument kinda falls apart because

i) jewish orthopraxy (i.e. the tangible practise of a religion) has always placed a strong emphasis on confining certain behaviours to their appropriate sacred contexts (time/space/situation) and to pull pieces of that out of those practises is, at best, incorrect and disrespectful

ii) jewish mysticism and kabbalah require extensive grounding in jewish theology which is achieved by rabbinical study, which i know these western esotericists were/are not doing. if you are not going through the proper channels, it's not kabbalah, it's appropriation

iii) the same people who appropriate jewish ideas or perpetuate appropriated ideas are functioning within societies that disdain and oppress jews. it isn't cultures coming together, it's appropriation

i often have to remind myself that most people are unaware of how deep the history of antisemitism and appropriation of judaism goes. the roots are as old as judaism itself, and maybe older if you want to quibble about terminology. (e.g. at what point can the ancient canaanite followers of yhwh be considered jews? food for academic discussion)

Anyway, to everyone in this trainwreck of a thread except BA and Foss:

This happens. It is not hard to find examples. It is actively difficult to find proper information on the concept of chakras because white westerners picked what they wanted and made up a lot of new shit based on the stuff they liked, and now a lot of english sources are based on western woowoo bullshit instead of original practices and beliefs. and people in India are being misinformed by white people who have 0 stake in anything about THEIR OWN SHIT. This is actively detrimental to our understanding of other cultures, and to many Indians’ understanding of their own.

Cultural appropriation can lead to deeply rotten, bigoted understanding of other cultures. Now that isn’t necessarily inevitable, but it happens often enough that it is VERY worth avoiding with marginalized cultures. Sharing a culture and learning about them is fine! Nobody said you couldn’t do that! But ripping things out of their original context, especially a context that few people outside of that culture knows and is vulnerable to bigotry, is quite bad. That’s literally just it.

I know that you know what "blood and soil" means.

Cultural appropriation is not real. It's a fake thing made up by racists and only makes sense under a racist worldview. It is still not real even when you say you are upset that other people aren't respecting your blood's claim to intellectual property. Your belief that your culture is being "stripped of its substance and importance" only makes sense in a racist worldview that believes blood has inherent right to certain property and that culture is harmed by interaction with other cultures. It is not. That's an incoherent idea.

We are saying that lazy, unresearched, and tactless use of our cultural heritage by outsiders is worthy of criticism. Put in the effort to understand the source material and make something great and we will love it. Lazy is lazy, tactless is tactless, you're not immune from criticism when using our cultural heritage in nonsensical or offensive ways.

So "Dorfl" is "holy fool (diminutive, affectionate)." None of the Feet of Clay golems have human names; they all have Yiddish-derived descriptors: Meshugah (the "king" golem who is literally driven insane by having too many conflicting instructions in his head), Klutz (works at the pickle factory, heh), Schmata ("rag" or "cheap clothing," works at a tailor's shop), Bobkes ("little thing of no significance"), Dibbuk ("malign possessing spirit/ghost"), etc.

Genre - Fluff, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Slice of Life, Case Fic, etc.

AU - If it's an AU, what kind? What role do each of the characters play? How is it different to their canon role?

Parts of canon - If it's not an AU, what part of canon is it about? Is it set before, during or after a particular episode?

Themes - Are there any topics or ideas which you are trying to explore, or which come up repeatedly?

Minor Warnings - Is there anything you think you should warn for that isn't included in the archive warnings?

Format & Length - Is your work art, video, podfic, etc? Does it use a particular format like a Drabble or 5+1?

Characters - What is going on with each of your major characters? If you had to describe them with one or two adjectives, what would you pick? (Format as [Adjective] [Character Name].)

Relationships - What is going on with each of your major relationships? Are there any relationship tropes like Slow Burn or Enemies to Lovers in your story?

Tropes - Are there any tropes or common story elements in your story that haven't been tagged yet? If your work was on TV tropes, what are the first things you would add?

Sex - If your work includes sex, what kink(s) and specific act(s) does it involve?

I have many reasons why I will not use those tools, going from lack of accuracy, lack of ethics, and a higher waste of energy.

But my main reason is this:

I will do things the hard way. I will learn how to do things the hard way.

Because AI is a subscription. And when the world is dependant on AI, they will raise the price of that subscription.

And when the company I work for decides that paying for AI is too expensive for their bottom line, they will remove it.