(no subject)

[feotakahari]

Person A doesn’t want you to use “creepy deer imagery” in your stories because they think that comes from wendigos, and somehow that’s racist.

Person B says they use creepy deer imagery in their stories because it comes from Leshy. They say you can use Leshy instead if you want creepy deer imagery.

Nobody points out that using Leshy for your creepy deer imagery will get you yelled at by people who think you’re using wendigos.

(Person C thinks that if you say “wendigo” the wendigos will get you.)

Comments

[random_thought_depository]

I think in a way I'd prefer the virtual company of people who thought Wendigos were an infohazard and consistently acted like it.

Like, it'd logically call for a totally different approach from the usual intensely IP-brained proprietary cultural appropriation discourse. For instance, under the infohazard concept, wouldn't distorted portrayals (e.g. humanoid deer monster depiction) be preferable to more authentic re-tellings of the original myth? The less like the real deal it looks like the less the real thing would recognize itself in it, right?

But instead wendigo discourse seems identical to generic cultural appropriation discourse, which makes me think it's probably mostly coming from either atheists who have a kind of indulgent attitude toward "native spirituality" or people who are religious/witchy as basically an exercise in Romanticism and/or ethno-nationalism and don't actually take the idea of real gods and spirits with independent will and desire and capabilities particularly seriously, not deep down in their System 1 anyway.

I wonder if there are any people who think you shouldn't talk about wendigos cause they're actual evil spirits that are attracted to people who talk about them but discourse about in standard cultural appropriation terms as a reverse "explaining why they shouldn't crack open the radioactive waste casks to people who have no concept of radioactivity but do believe in evil magic" exercise (in this case, explaining why they shouldn't invoke the dangerous spirit to people who don't seriously believe in those things but are afraid of being inadvertently racist). This is probably just a person I've made up in my mind but part of me kind of wishes they exist cause I'd kind of respect them if they do. Like, congratulations, the people who design long-term deep nuclear waste repositories might learn a thing or two from talking to you. Reminds me of the thing I wrote here:

https://random-thought-depository.tumblr.com/post/709275487935086592/that-exorcist-prequel-was-on-tv-last-night-kind

Edit: this might be the germ of an interesting idea for a horror story. Protagonist desperately trying to protect their friends from further attracting the attention of an evil spirit they've unknowingly invoked, and because their friends are SJ-inflected liberal basically-atheists they're having to phrase all their "for God's sake don't do that!" advice as "doing that would be disrespectful to my culture."