ACTUAL Mesopotamian Pagan Goddesses You Can Work With INSTEAD Of Lilith 🌙
So if you've seen the old post of mine touching on an antisemitic "Demonolatry" subreddit, you'll probably have heard about the common argument antisemitic practitioners make to try and justify appropriating Lilith and a lot of other Jewish daemons.
A lot of these people will try to propose that working with Lilith isn't cultural appropriation, because she predates Judaism and is actually a "MeSoPoTaMiAn PaGaN gOdDeSs". And I don't think it takes a genius to realise that this is absolute horse shit lol. Just look at any Mesopotamian deities list and she's not there.
These people are most likely referring to similar spirits such as Lamashtu, Kilili, Ki-sikil-lil-la-ke, Ardat-Lili, and even Inanna/Ishtar in some instances. There's also the family of desert-dwelling night spirits that comprise of the Lilu and the Lilitu/Lili daemons.
While Lilith may have originated from or was based off of these daemons, they are not the same as Lilith. And I get that people have their own UPGs on certain entities being aspects of one another and such, but if that entity is part of a closed practise, you are in no place to even have a UPG on them to begin with. It comes from a practise that you aren't a part of, therefore you have no right or reason to have a UPG on it. Please just leave closed practices alone.
To my knowledge, one of the first times Lilith was documented was in the Dead Sea Scrolls, along with the daemon race of Lilin. The Dead Sea Scrolls is a Jewish/Hebrew text. So the idea that Lilith predates Judaism is just not true, and it's clearly an excuse made by people who appropriate her in an effort to brush off any accusations of their cultural appropriation and covert antisemitism. Lilith and the Lilin are only loosely based on the Lilitu wind spirits; They are not synonymous with one another. Anyone who tries to claim they are is just blatantly uneducated and/or antisemitic.
The whole idea of Lilith having origins in Mesopotamian mythology can all be traced back to a mistranslation. The BS-Free Podcast has an episode on this and it goes into depth about this mistranslation. I highly recommend checking out their podcast episode here!
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In an attempt to combat some of this antisemitic fuckshit, I wanted to make an entire blog post dedicated to the goddesses and daemonesses of ancient Mesopotamia that you can work with instead of Lilith! I've had this idea for a little while now, but didn't really know who to include or how to construct this until now.
I also have another post in the making which will be a more UPG based post and will also include sigils, conjuration chants, correspondences, illustrations, etc. This current post merely exists to function as a guide and a sort of directory, with mostly historical information about each spirit listed.
So without further ado, let me show you some of the other goddesses, daemonesses, and spirits you can work with; All without appropriating someone else's ethnoreligion!
Full post is under the cut. ↓
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☣️ DISCLAIMER: Some of these spirits may be considered intense, unpredictable, and chaotic in nature. These spirits can be overwhelming to work with if you are sensitive to such spiritual energies. Please tread with caution, especially if you're a beginner practitioner. Stay safe. Xx
⚠️ TRIGGER WARNING: Mentions of infant/child d3ath, ab0rti0n, and slight mentions of s3xual a55ault/abu5e and r4pe but nothing described in any explicit detail. Also slight mentions of antisemitism and Ne0-Naz1sm towards the end of the post.
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Here are some ACTUAL Mesopotamian Goddesses and Daemonesses that can ACTUALLY be considered Pagan. These spirits, in my opinion, seem to bear the most resemblance to the pop-cultural stereotype of "Lilith".
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+: Kilili :+
Lady Kilili is a daemoness of Sumerian origin, likely associated with owls. She is also attested as a minor goddess who functioned as a servant of Inanna/Ishtar.
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Lady Kilili's name is that of a bird, most likely an owl. In one source she is equated with ab-ba-su-su, meaning "she who leans on the window" in Sumerian. She could be referred to as "queen of the windows" and "the one of haunted places", and it's assumed that she was imagined as an owl daemoness.
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Kilili was usually affiliated with Ishtar, and according to at least one source, is said to be one of her eighteen messengers. She could also be considered as having a connection to sex due to her link with Ishtar. Kilili could also possibly have links with Lady Ardat-Lili due to similar affiliations, but there is no solid evidence for this.
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It has also been theorised that Queen Kilili is in fact the goddess figure depicted in the Burney Relief terracotta plaque, and while it is highly likely, this has never been officially confirmed.
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With the limited information we have on Queen Kilili, all we can really say is that she was likely a daemoness and goddess of owls, nocturnal animals, the night, sexuality, and portals to other worlds (hence the whole "windows" affiliation).
. . .
+: Lamashtu :+
Lady Lamashtu, also known as Lady Labartu, is a Mesopotamian daemoness and (demi)goddess who was said to menace pregnant women during childbirth, and allegedly kidnapped children and devoured them. She was blamed for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, as humans didn't yet have a medical explanation for this phenomenon at the time.
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She was the daughter of the Mesopotamian Sky God Anu. There are also modern day accounts of Pazuzu being her consort (the Daemon King of the Southwest Winds) and their offspring being the Lilu wind daemons. In my UPG, Pazuzu and Lamashtu seem to be friends with one another (or at most, in a queer-platonic relationship) but aren't necessarily espoused to one another. I do believe there are a specific subtype of Lilu wind daemons that were created by them though.
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Lamashtu was also associated with ab0rting unborns and killing newborns, eating men and drinking their blood, disturbing sleep, bringing nightmares, allegedly harassing mothers and expectant mothers, infesting lakes and rivers, killing foliage, and being a bringer of disease, sickness, and death.
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Queen Lamashtu was classified as an "evil" spirit, as she acted on her own accord rather than following the gods' instructions. However, it is likely that she was just a more chaotic spirit, as not everything in our world can simply be divided up into "good" and "evil". At least, that's what I believe anyways.
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In modern times, Lamashtu could more so be seen as an advocate for ab0rti0n rights and women's rights, as well as a defender of women and neglected/abu5ed children, rather than being a malicious monster who kills without any motive.
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As for the men she devours, perhaps we could suggest that these men were persecuting innocent women and sƐxually a55aulting and r4ping them, impregnating them with children the women did not want or were unable to care for. Lamashtu might then assist the woman with ab0rting the unborn child, and then guiding it to the afterlife or elsewhere to be potentially reincarnated.
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She could also be seen as persecuting sƐxual abu5ers and protecting the victims or potential victims of such a55aults. I don't know, just some food for thought lol. A lot of the areas in which Ancient Mesopotamian religion was practiced had quite misogynistic attitudes towards women, being the time era that it was (obligating them to stay home and be wives); So perhaps Lady Lamashtu's mythos was somewhat twisted out of content because she didn't fill that stereotypical role. In a way, this could make Lamashtu quite the feminist icon!
. . .
+: Akhkhazu :+
Lady Akhkhazu, also known as Dimme-kur, is a Akkadian daemoness associated with pestilence. She is also called "the seizer".
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Akhkhazu brings fever and plagues, and is a part of a trio of daemonesses (Labasu, Lamashtu/Labartu, Akhkhazu). Despite the fact that Akhkhazu is known as a masculine name, she is said to be feminine in nature.
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Next to nothing is known of Lady Akhkhazu, however we can confirm that due to her link with Queen Lamashtu, she can be associated with death, destruction, and sickness. Being a daemoness of plagues and illness, it could be proposed that Akhkhazu may also be able to help heal these things.
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+: Labasu :+
Lady Labasu was a part of the aforementioned trio of Mesopotamian daemonesses alongside Lamashtu/Labartu and Akhkhazu. She is said to have the same powers and associations as the other daemonesses in that trio.
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Not much is known about Labasu outside of that, but we can assume that she's a daemoness of disease, plagues, pestilence, death, and decay. I believe she could also solely be worked with as a death daemon/deity.
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+: Inanna-Ishtar :+
Lady Inanna, also known as Lady Ishtar, is an ancient Mesopotamian goddess of love, beauty, justice, war, and fertility. She is also associated with sex, divine law/justice, and political power. It was initially thought that Inanna and Ishtar were originally seperate deities, but overtime merged into the same deity (similar to how Amun and Ra merged to become Amun-Ra).
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Inanna-Ishtar's prominent symbols were the lion and the eight-pointed star. She also had associations with the planet Venus. She held the title of the "Queen of Heaven".
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Her spouse was Dumuzid (later known as Tammuz), the god of shepherds, fertility, and vegetation.
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+: Ki-sikil-lil-la-ke :+
Lady Ki-sikil-lil-la-ke (also known as Kisikil-lila or Ki-sikil) is another obscure Mesopotamian daemoness of which not much is known about.
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Her origins date as far back as 600 BCE, in the Epic Of Gilgamesh, an ancient Sumerian epic poem. In Tablet XII, an Assyrian-Akkadian translation of the latter part of the Epic Of Gilgamesh, it tells the story of a 'spirit in the tree' referred to as Ki-sikil-lil-la-ke. Proposed translations for the Tablet XII 'spirit in the tree' include; Ki-sikil as "sacred place", lil-la-ke as "water spirit, and lil as either "spirit" or simply "owl" (given that the lil builds its home in the trunk of a tree).
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The Ki-sikil-lil-la-ke is associated with a serpent and a Zu bird. In the ancient city of Uruk, a huluppu tree grows in Inanna's garden, and she plans to use the wood of the tree to build a new throne. After ten years of growth, Inanna returns to the garden to harvest the tree, but finds that it has since been inhabited. A serpent is dwelling at the base of the tree, a Zu bird is nesting atop the tree raising its young, and the Ki-sikil-lil-la-ke has built a home within its trunk.
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Gilgamesh was said to have killed the serpent, then the Zu bird flew away to the mountains with its young, while the Ki-sikil-lil-la-ke fearfully destroyed her house and fled to the forests.
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Lady Ki-sikil's story was eventually mistranslated as referring to Lilith, leading to the misinformation of Lilith having origins in Mesopotamian mythology.
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Outside of this, not much is known of Lady Ki-sikil. Going off the limited information we have of her, we can conclude that her associations are with willow trees, owls (or other birds of prey), water, snakes, forests, and vegetation in general.
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+: Ardat-lili :+
Lady Ardat-lili (also known as Vardat-lilitu) is a Mesopotamian daemoness and wind/storm goddess who inhabits the desert. Not much is known of this daemoness, but in modern times she has been likened to a "succubus" or vampiric-like entity. Ardat-lili was said to prey on men and conceive daemon offspring from their nocturnal emissions.
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There are a few different stories of Ardat-lili's origins. Some sources claim that she was the spectre of a young girl who died before getting married, and out of sheer bitterness and envy, she sets out to prevent and/or sabotage the marriages between mortals. Other accounts suggest that Ardat-lili may refer to a specific family of multiple spirits, rather than a singular entity. In my UPG, Ardat-Lili is a daemoness, whereas the Lilitu/Lili are a class of spirits that Ardat-Lili belongs to.
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Ardat-lili is yet another daemoness of which little information is known, and it's likely that a lot of her mythos was lost to history. I personally interpret her as a daemoness/goddess of storms, wind, the desert, sexuality, and the night. I also see her as being androgynous, similarly to how I see Astaroth in my UPG.
. . .
+: Ereshkigal :+
Lady Ereshkigal (also known by the titles "Queen Of The Underworld" and "Queen Of The Great Earth") is the Goddess of Kur, the land of the dead in Sumerian mythology. In later myths, she was said to rule Irkalla alongside her husband Nergal. However, Ereshkigal and Nergal were only two of the many deities that ruled over the underworld in ancient Mesopotamia.
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On some accounts, her name was given as Irkalla, similar to how the Greek name Hades was given to the underworld itself as well as the ruler of the underworld. Ereshkigal is also known by the name of Ninkigal, meaning "Lady Of The Great Earth".
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In the ancient Sumerian poem Inanna's Descent To The Underworld, Ereshkigal was said to be the older sister of the aforementioned Inanna-Ishtar. But historically, they weren't commonly associated with one another. Another account associates Ereshkigal with the gods Ninazu (originally regarded as her husband but later as her son) and Ningishzida. It was said that Ninazu initially ruled over the Underworld, but Ereshkigal later fulfilled this role as the mythos evolved overtime.
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In later Babylonian deity lists, Ereshkigal ruled over a category of Underworldian gods that were known as "Transtigridian Snake Gods" which included Ninazu, Tishpak, Ishtaran, and the Elamite god Inshushinak. She also had a messenger named Namtar.
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Some accounts suggest that Ereshkigal and Inanna-Ishtar are somewhat polar opposites to one another; With Inanna-Ishtar being the Queen Of Heaven, and Ereshkigal being the Queen Of The Underworld.
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+: Tiamat :+
Lady Tiamat (a.k.a. "The Glistening One") is the primordial goddess of the sea in Babylonian mythology. She represented the embodiment of primordial chaos, and was said to have created the entirety of the cosmos and the universe. with the help of her consort Abzu, the god of groundwater.
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Tiamat's consort was Abzu, the god of groundwater. Together, they bore the first generation of deities, including their son Kingu. However, trouble arose when these gods kidnapped and murdered Abzu in an attempt to usurp his lordship over the universe. This angered Kingu, and he reported the incident back to his mother.
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Devastated and enraged by her husband's death, Tiamat created eleven mighty monsters, including the first ever generation of dragons, whose bodies she filled with "poison instead of blood" and sent them to rage war upon the gods to avenge her husband. After war broke out, Tiamat was eventually killed by the storm god Marduk, and it was said that he integrated elements of her body into the heavens and the earth.
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Tiamat is associated with sea serpents and dragons, and may have even taken the form of these animals sometimes.
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Side Note: I actually wanna make a whole seperate post regarding the eleven monsters created by Tiamat, because I think they're really cool and I do wanna venerate them at some point!
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Welp, that's pretty much it for this post! I will eventually be making a post about The Anti-Lilith-Appropriation Hierarchy Of Spirits I have come up with, comprised of all the spirits, goddesses, and daemonesses you can work with and venerate instead of Lilith. So stay tuned for that!
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There are many different deities, daemons, and spirits that you can honour, worship, and venerate; Lilith doesn't need to be one of them.
Respecting closed practices is of upmost importance, because here's the thing... Spirituality and metaphysical beings cannot be definitely proven to exist. However, the years upon years of discrimination, erasure, xenophobia, religiophobia, and maltreatment in general that groups of people such as Jews and Muslims have had to go through, is very much real and can be backed up by solid evidence.
Do you really think it makes sense to prioritise something that could very well be all in your head, over actual oppressed minorities who have literally been mistreated and even killed since the very beginning of time, all because of shitty bigoted people's prejudices? Just think about that for a second.
Because if you still think it's completely fine to appropriate Lilith, even though it is evidently clear that she is closed and exclusive to Judaism (NOT Mesopotamian), then I have absolutely no problem assuming you're antisemitic and most likely a Ne0-Naz1 as well. And if you are, you should go and fuck yourself. :)
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There's unfortunately quite a lot of antisemitism in occult spaces, especially when it comes to Satanism, Daemonolatry, and Luciferianism in particular. I want to do my best to counteract this shit and to help educate those new to this branch of the occult, so that unsuspecting people don't fall down an antisemitic pipeline like I did at the beginning of my path onto Daemonism and Daemonolatry.
If my best friend hadn't educated me on how bad cultural appropriation actually is and hadn't snapped me out of my radicalisation process, the gods only know where I would've ended up... It deeply concerns me just thinking about it. I hate to think about how antisemitic occult spaces such as r/DemonolatryPractices could've potentially led to me being radicalised into a Ne0-Naz1... Ugh, it makes me fucking shudder...
Please don't fall into the trap of thinking that cultural appropriation is completely fine and not harmful at all, because if you give that shit enough time to fester, you never know what it could snowball into. You'll most likely fall down a right-wing pipeline, and trust me, it is not a place you want to end up in.
I had to learn that the hard way.
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Anyways, I hope you found this post helpful and informative! And as always, I wish you well on your spiritual journey. <3
~ May You Be Blessed By The Daemonic/Infernal Divine ~
-Kody
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Have you seen the formline art in splatoon? It's present in a variety of salmon run decals and on some of the locker graffiti. Idk if the Devs just googled "salmon art" and got indigenous art and decided to copy it or what. Not sure how I feel about it personally.
Long post incoming, gonna put a break here. Also sorry for the late response, I wanted to take a couple days to formalize my thoughts together before responding fully.
I have, I remember noticing in 2018-2019 (when i first started playing splatoon 2) how much one of the decals/graffiti located on the ruins of ark polaris back in 2 sort of resembled a formline bear and salmon. (near the logo in this screenshot, I couldn't find a clear picture online)
Back in 2019, it was pretty easy to think of it as coincidence or a stretch for a comparison. But with splatoon 3's salmon run decals, the resemblance is far easier to see, specifically with the TS-ORBRS graffiti and the TS-SCHL graffiti.
(also this was the best image size I could find for the graffiti images, sorry)
A couple of the banners have the designs on them as well:
The website Sealaska Heritage has info such as textbooks and an online doc about formline art (specifically geared towards Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshian nations' style) with lots of info about formline art, and the Seattle Art Museum website has an info sheet (with credits listed as being from the Sealaska Heritage site as well) breaking down some of the basic shapes of formline art.
with this chart, you can definitely begin to notice the similarities between the Salmon Run graffiti and formline art. the ovoids, crescents, and u-shapes appear noticeably in some of the graffiti such as ORBRS and SCHL.
For perspective, here are some formline pieces featuring salmon or fish from various Indigenous artists from various nations.
"sk’ug sdang" (Two Dog Salmon) by Robert Davidson (Haida)
"metal medallion", by Crystal Kaakeeyáa Rose Demientieff Worl (Tlingit Athabascan)
"Salmon People" by Alano Edzerza (Tahltan)
"Jumping Chum" by Stephanie Anderson (Wet'suwet'en)
"Salmon" by Art Thompson (Nuu-chah-nulth)
And that's literally just the surface of dozens of Indigenous artists from the PNW.
With these pieces, you can begin to see the resemblance that the graffiti designs have. A lot of the heads follow the pattern of utilizing ovoids for both the head and eyes, and u-shapes for the bodies and crescents to fill in specific areas are also common. For example, TS-SCHL has a small school of fish where the bodies are entire ovoids.
However, there are a couple flaws in the graffiti designs too. With a few of the designs, you can see they utilize the u-shape (see the formline shape breakdown from Sealaska again) in designs like TS-WHP and TS-SMFR. I can't speak for every Indigenous formline artist ever, but from how I've been taught to design formline art from my family, the u-shape should connect to the rest of the form instead of free-floating. I drew a quick example here:
you can see similar mistakes with a different kind of u-shape with TS-RLPL and TS-C0HK.
Another very specific mistake that takes a bit of squinting to make out is that ovoids are sort of top-heavy, for lack of a term I can't think of right now. The line or the area should be thicker on the top then the bottom. This mistake is frequent in the graffiti designs utilizing ovoid or ovoid adjacent face or body shapes, like TS-ORBRS, TS-C0HK or TS-SCHL.
Full disclaimer, I am not an expert at formline art. I've been practicing it under the tutelage of my aunt and father for about 3 or so years now, and there are definitely cultural variations that come into play as well. My culture's formline art style can look completely different from someone who is Haida or otherwise. This critique of the graffiti designs is based off my knowledge and skill at formline art, as well as critique and feedback that I've gotten from family. Formline art isn't just something you look at and replicate, there is a specific process of utilizing the shapes and negative space that you need to account for too. Some shapes have their own rules for how they're used as well.
Despite the beginner mistakes, the clear resemblances are pretty definitive proof that a good section of the sticker/graffiti designs for the salmonids are meant to be, or at the very least based off of or inspired by, formline art.
Splatoon's lore has a lot of elements of taking inspiration from real life culture (which is sort of one of the main elements of the story, the squids and octos are basing their society off long dead humans). Hell, Shiver and Frye are two prime examples of Splatoon working in real world culture into their setting and characters.
With that in mind, using an art style that's exclusive to an ethnicity of people as inspiration or baseline reference for the game mode that's all about taking natural resources from a species that in-game dialogue tends to treat as dangerous and lesser-minded is... not a good choice. Especially an ethnicity that has historically been ravaged and attacked by settlers for natural resources.
Now, technically if you do digging into lore for salmon run, you can find out that the salmonid are not as simple-minded as the dialogue in-game (I am staring directly at the deep cut big run announcement dialogue we've gotten so far -_-) makes them out to be. The salmonids do trades and commerce with the octarians for equipment and gear. That's why they have such technically high tech gear, like the scrappers with their shields that actually resemble octarian shields and the flyfish with their missiles and flying aircraft. That's also why power eggs show up in the story mode; they're from the salmonids' trades with the octarians.
So the salmonid could technically be as just as smart as the inklings, which is why the dialogue and some of the portrayals of the salmonid are confusing and contradictory (shiver's dialogue from the first big run, that one promo picture of an inkling walking a smallfry on a leash????). I think a good bit of the fanbase sort of thinks of the little buddy we get during the game as a pet, and I'm sure that much more of the fanbase/playerbase doesn't really care about the lore whatsoever. Salmonids sort of have a similar vibe to me as hilichurls from Genshin Impact, where the lore tells you that they're smarter than people assume while NPCs talk of them as less intelligent monsters. And you're also caught in this paradox where killing/fighting them feels morally wrong but the gameplay loop has you continuously doing that while also telling you on the downlow that you should sort of feel bad about it.
Rassicas did a really good video on translating salmonid lore from various interviews, which is where I learned a lot about the salmonid lore that doesn't really get explained/brought up in the game.
The usage of formline art in Splatoon has me sort of mixed on my opinion, because besides using an Indigenous art style for an enemy species that are considered lesser in intelligence by the NPCs, Indigenous art and culture as a whole has suffered a lot under colonialism. I don't know how much awareness whoever is reading this has about Indigenous history and colonialism, but Indigenous culture as a whole was banned in North America by the respective governments from being practiced by the respective cultural groups. Things such as ceremonies, regalia, and even practicing formline art were banned from being used by Indigenous people. Non-Indigenous people however were free to use it, which is why a lot of bastardized versions of Indigenous regalia and culture exists. You can see it in non-indigenous spiritual practices utilizing Indigenous practices and terminology like spirit animals and dreamcatchers, and sports teams utilizing Indigenous culture in its labelling and mascots. That is where cultural appropriation comes into play. And before I get anybody commenting about this, the salmonid formlines don't count as "cultural appreciation" because as far as the info available is concerned, there wasn't any Indigenous people that were consulted for the designs. And even if there were, I again have mixed feelings about Splatoon utilizing an Indigenous art style as a design piece for an enemy character in the franchise.
On another note, this isn't the first time Indigenous cultural appropriation has popped up in the Splatoon franchise. There was actually a headgear that was unreleased in the first Splatoon game called "Warrior Headdress", and you can guess what it looked like.
Yeah. That was all levels of yikes and I'm thankful as hell that it didn't make it into the game (technically it's not in the game as a wearable item, but you can spot it at the very back of the headgear shop ingame)
So Splatoon has utilized Indigenous culture as inspiration beforehand with the games, so it's not much of a stretch anymore to think that the salmon run graffiti designs were based off formline art or was an attempt at formline art.
I'm not really sold on the idea that the salmonid are meant to be representative of Indigenous people though, nor do I believe that utilizing formline art for the salmonid was a malicious decision. But it was a slightly ignorant decision at best, because again using Indigenous specific art for a species of enemies that gets fought for their natural resources and is referred to by some of the NPCs as basically being lesser-minded animals is really not a good decision.
This whole thread is not meant as a guilt trip for anyone who likes the salmonid lore, has bought any of the salmonid graffiti stickers, or enjoys salmon run, nor is it an accusation of the devs for maliciously misusing Indigenous culture. I actually really enjoy salmon run for it's PSP and concept, but this design aspect gives me mixed feelings as an Indigenous person. And to be honest it's hard to label intentions or the thought process because there isn't any info available on the development of salmon run and those graffiti designs specifically. So it's hard to know if the devs employed an Indigenous artist for feedback or if they indeed just looked at some formline art of salmon and tried to replicate it or used it as inspiration. I'm inclined to believe the latter judging by the beginner formline mistakes seen in some of the designs. There is an art book coming out soon for Splatoon 3, so maybe that will give more info.
To wrap this all up, I don't think there is really anything to be done about the designs. The game has been out for a while and I don't know if the game would change the designs at this point. I also don't think this should stop people from buying the sticker designs in game or playing salmon run. However, it is important to learn about the context of these designs so that you know why they exist and why they can be harmful, and so devs and creators can avoid making the same mistake in the future, and so Indigenous issues with cultural appropriation can be made more aware in the public space and not be ridiculed by non-Indigenous people. And again, I am just one Indigenous person so there may be other opinions from other Indigenous people on the graffiti designs and how they should be handled or viewed.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading and have a good day!! Be sure to check out some actual Formline art made by Indigenous people, like the ones I listed near the top of the post!
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@koopytron
Forgive my ignorance, but doesn't a set like this help expose people to cultures that they might not have known about? What about players that live in that country and want to dress up in their traditional clothes, are they not allowed to?
I’m responding over here mostly because my reply got a bit long.
First off, I’m no authority on the Sámi. I want to make that very clear - I’m just echoing what has been said so far by people who have a vested interest in this gear’s removal. And again, I want to reiterate by pointing out that for information your best bets are the initial letter to Square Enix, as well as this thread by a Sámi player.
The argument for exposure looks nice on paper, but usually isn’t ever executed well - especially in the case of the Far Northern attire. FFXIV isn’t set up to teach people about cultures (unless it’s Stormblood and the two different fantasy Japans), it’s set up to use cultures as an aesthetic to give each nation a bit of flavor. Thavnair is India, Ul’dah is your typical desert city, the elves are French, Ala Mhigans are Kurdish and Armenian, Xaela are Mongolian etc etc. And how much care that goes into representing and educating players about these cultures varies depending on who it is and if Square cares about them. And every instance of an indigenous culture has been the exact opposite. Even their treatment of the Xaela and Ala Mhigans are extremely demeaning, but that’s a different topic altogether.
If Square had any interest in exposing people to Sámi culture, they would have contacted the tribe for a collaboration and make them have more of a presence in game than just a glam item that costs $18USD. They would’ve also done research into what gákti actually look like, and maybe named each piece appropriately. Instead, we have an offensive caricature that costs $18USD, doesn’t have any cultural presence in the game, and is nothing but a disconnected costume meant to line their paychecks. And as a reminder: the Sámi were never contacted, Square has not reached out after this demand, and they’ve received no money for Square using their material culture for profit. What’s sad is Disney did better than them after Frozen, as they similarly appropriated their regalia and even took their music. Frozen 2 saw them collaborating and the film was even released in one of the Sámi languages, though I’m not entirely sure if they ever saw any amount of the film’s revenue - if someone happens to see this and they know, feel free to correct me.
I think the more important thing here is: do we even want Square to be exposing players to Sámi culture? Because they do not have a good track record when it concerns portraying indigenous cultures. Anyone can feel free to add in stuff I’ve missed, but there are plenty examples through the entire Final Fantasy franchise - including, but not limited to: including monsters that have roots in nativist imagery (anthropophage) but naming them after a particular spirit in Algonquin folklore that people keep asking to not be named or included in media; the entirety of Red XIII’s character (even the name he’s introduced by, despite him actually being named Nanaki); the initial portrayal of the Ronso in X (that then got “sophisticated” into the suddenly Icelandic Hrothgar); and the palewashing of Viera (mesoamerican indigenous coded in XII) in the jump to XIV by only focusing on the palest of individuals and making most of them white-looking.
And then there’s the stuff in XIV. Most of the Tribes (which up until recently were literally known as beast tribes) up until Stormblood are based in some racist depiction of indigenous peoples - like Square did all of their research through racist American movies from the past century. Many speak in the stilted English you’d see in racist advertisements and media (eg. the Vanu Vanu, and the yoda-like speak of the Ixal), they’re all anthropomorphized animals to some degree and not at all...y’know, human; you spend a significant amount of the game hunting them and being rewarded for doing so (especially if you do daily Clan Centurio marks), many are based on real cultures (Ixal are clearly meso-/south american, Vanu Vanu literally have totems and everything), and the Amalj’aa embody the entire Noble Savage trope to a T (only source for this is unfortunately Wikipedia because everything else was paywalled or didn’t touch on how racist this is). We only saw this shift in not calling them “beast” tribes anymore around Stormblood because we suddenly got the Kojin (respected merchants based on Kappa), and the Namazu - techincally also the Lupin, but the shared factor is that they’re all predominant Japanese cultures that they’d never bastardize because the entire Doma half of Stormblood is them drinking the Japanese Imperialism kool-aid (again, another topic altogether and best discussed by someone like the journalist, Kazuma Hashimoto - who goes into it a lot on streams). After that, we saw a deemphasis on indigenous cultures in the tribe quests and the removal of the name once Dwarves, Pixies, Arkosodara, Loporrits, and Omicrons were added. Qitari are loosely here because they are the First equivalent of the Qiqirn, but they’d still “fit” in the old category by Square’s measure.
And then of course the Whalaqee, the entire New World nonsense, how they portray the Mamool’ja (who are from the “New World”), and the entire racist premise of the BLU questline. Which is literally just “White Savior is the only one who can save this dying native tribe from evil oil ceruleum barons who brought diseases over, and your main reps are two animal looking guys and a very pale native boy like the tropes from the old movies”. And yes, this is where the racist New World gear comes in, because that’s the clothing every single member of the Whalaqee wear despite it being a disgusting caricature of ceremonial gear with the war bonnet and everything. The Mamool’ja are also frequently depicted as unintelligent and only suited for war, and are extremely sexual and there’s a fate where one gets kicked out of the Camp Bronze Lake baths for being too sexual. Which again: nativist stereotypes that don’t just apply to indigenous tribes of the Americas, but also Japan’s own indigenous peoples - especially the Ryuukyuuan!
The New World gear wasn’t put in there to expose players to indigenous cultures. They included a racist caricature so people could play dress up with those pieces, and locking their (racist) context behind a side quest most people skip or ignore. And what ends up happening is whenever I do see players wearing it, it’s almost never people of those cultures doing it “for their own sake” - as it’s a racist caricature and not actually their cultural clothing or what they’d wear - it’s instead people playing out the racist caricatures. I’ve seen white catgirls with neon pink war bonnets and bikinis, I’ve seen literal red-skinned players in the full get up, and many other offensive costumes that’s come as a result of this set being in the game.
But that set is obtainable through normal gameplay. The Far Northern set is paywalled, making this especially egregious that it’s a racist caricature of Sámi regalia that they’re making a load of money off of.
There is no in game “Far Northern” culture - it’s just a racist costume for players (and they’re designing this for the majority white, and Yamato Japanese player base) to play dress up with. They design the game with dominant cultures in mind (hence why everything is so heavy handed with European and Japanese aesthetics and gear, but there’s a suspicious lack of Korean and SWANA names, material culture, etc. when both exist in the game in their own ways through “Far Eastern” attire and Ala Mhigan stuff). If they’d had any intention on exposing the players to Sámi culture, they would’ve contacted the Sámi for sensitivity or even just copyright issues.
But they didn’t.
Exposing and teaching other people about cultures varies depending on who you’re talking about. It’s especially sensitive when you have a matter of appropriating not only a minority culture, but one that’s being suffocated by colonization and majority culture appropriation. It’s why it’s not really an issue that places like Ishgard are a few mixes of European stuff, or that Hingashi is based in Japan pre-border opening, but it’s a major issue for them to bastardize Mongolian, Armenian, Kurdish, and the various indigenous cultures that they have in their inclusion through the Xaela (described as barbaric, and “will eventually be their own extinction” according to the Namazu quests), the Ala Mhigans (who are not treated with the same level of dignity or respect as the Domans, and are portrayed as aggressive and lower class), and the ARR-HVW tribe quests + the Whalaqee (see the above).
It’s fine to want to expose people to other cultures. You just have to do it on the terms of the cultures themselves. And going behind the backs of the Sámi people and creating a racist costume that costs $18USD isn’t exposing anyone to their culture (if they did, it’s through discourse like this); it’s just Square making money off of a racist costume so people can play dress up with regalia that isn’t theirs.
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