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I already spoke about my krokul paratypy and my Argus parahearth home here, so this will be a continuation of that. This identity developed through roleplay. Through role play and writing, it began to develop how I saw the elementals and the planet Argus itself, even out of character. As such, I believe the term imagithrope is also suitable to describe my connection to shamanism and Argus. Do note that I already had certain feelings from Argus, and the krokul, but roleplaying had made them stronger. As I mentioned in one of my other essays about a separate topic, "the krokul have always sparked my heart in a very certain way. It's to the point that I consider the Krokul a paratype because of their cultural similarities to the Nerazim. When I saw the artwork where Nobundo saw his old self in the water's reflection, 12 year old me really felt that. It was a whole decade before learning about alterhumanity."
I will also talk about my skepticism with Abrahamic religions under the cut, as this goes hand in hand with my animist beliefs. I will be deconstructing it. So, if this skepticism bothers the reader, don't read further.
To start, I will quote a passage from Nobundo's short story, "Everything that is, is alive." But this requires some context from this life time. I'm a pantheist, who has always had animistic beliefs about things, I don't believe in any Abhrahamic depiction of a god, and find it to be an incredibly narrow view of a much wider, diverse universe. Instead, I think that everything is conscious and everything is 'god'.
I'm not saying that they are wrong 100% of the time, only that it's just a sliver of understanding to the real nature of the universe. As I talked about in my metaphysics essay, Plato had the right idea about the cave allegory, where people who lived their entire lives have only seen the shadows on the wall, and believed it to be the real nature of reality. To me, humans have only seen the shadows, even with their understanding of religion. The great irony is that early Christian religion used these Platonic beliefs and used it to influence early Christianity, only they made an error by trying to make known the unknowable and tried to personify and constrain their monotheistic god rather than keeping this concept as an energetic, unknowable entity. Thereby they tried to learn the unknowable, which is folly. Animism and pantheism to me, takes a much more open minded view, away from these narrow constraints. The nature of reality has always been to flow, not to constrict. In this way, everything is alive.
In the Warcraft cosmos, the Light and the Void created reality. And it was the shards of Light that formed the first elementals, sending them scattering throughout the universe. I understand that the elementals wouldn't exist without the Light. But still, the Light feels inherently restrictive to me. It always has. In a way, it reminds me of the oppression of the Khala. The Light just lets you call down holy power, to heal, cleanse and enchant things, and can burn. Its skill set is incredibly narrow compared to elemental shamanism. Shamans can also do these things, but whatever they are trying to cleanse might be more difficult or easier to do, depending on what it is.
Does the Light let you call upon the clouds, the wind, lightning, ice, water, rain, and earth? No it doesn't. I can make very clear comparisons between Christianity and the Light, and between elementalism and animism. After seeing how the Light just left the krokul after their transformations, you begin to see how it's unnecessarily restrictive. Elementals just require someone to open their mind and listen to the natural world. The Light seemed to have made them deaf to the elements for so long.
After roleplaying my shaman, I began to see wind, water, earth and fire more like their own entities, (even though I've collected and worked with crystals before that point). Candle flames and calmed bodies of water had their own emotions and vibes to them, most often happy. Due to my own animistic background and beliefs, it became easy for me to see them as their own entities with their own spirits and preferences. For Nobundo, the first step was learning that everything was alive, even the inorganic.
I believe my character's connection to Argus and desire to help the elements of every single world he comes across comes from my own exotrauma with seeing worlds destroyed by malicious forces. Whether that malicious force be Amon or Sargeras, the leader of a group of demons who tried to destroy or corrupt all life (they also literally share the same voice actor.) How would you feel if you were watching omnicidal and extinction level events take place in real time among multiple planets? It wasn't just the organic beings that were hurt on Argus, but even the elemental spirits. Granted, there were no personifiable elementals like this in my main source, so this arose only through roleplay.
Moving on to the other aspect of my imagithropy, I began to see the krokul in a different way. I deeply pitied and sympathized with them. But as I roleplayed my shaman over the years, I began to see their mutations as a source of strength and spite against those who feared and despised them for what they were. The clearest observation of this was when I compare my current artwork of my shaman to the first time I drew him. He looks much more confident and sure of himself now. He looked very miserable the first time I drew him, making it clear that he was visibly mutated by the fel magic. I do actually get phantom limbs of the three prehensile back tendrils the krokul have on their back, whenever elemental magic or krokuls come up in a conversation. The back tendrils act similarly to tails. With the difference being is that they are all muscle and boneless. The older in-game models also completely lacked hooves. Instead, they had clawed toes, which I also have. Although the krokul I do play have hooves, that is something that doesn't carry over towards this cameo shift.
There have been times where my shaman had multiple opportunities to undo becoming a krokul, but I quickly dismissed the idea each time because his krokul-ness is essential to who he is as a person. And I see it as a living symbol of survival throughout all those struggles. I feel that they shouldn't try to change themselves just because they were something else in the past. This is also a theme shared by a few of my other characters, wishing to return to the state they were in the past. Only this 'state' I feel forced to return to might have to do with feeling that I can only be whole with the Khala, which as I've mentioned, I wasn't part of. Although the social pressures were there for me. In the same way, I'm pressured by society in the modern day to be something I'm not.
I will also talk about my skepticism with Abrahamic religions under the cut, as this goes hand in hand with my animist beliefs. I will be deconstructing it. So, if this skepticism bothers the reader, don't read further.
To start, I will quote a passage from Nobundo's short story, "Everything that is, is alive." But this requires some context from this life time. I'm a pantheist, who has always had animistic beliefs about things, I don't believe in any Abhrahamic depiction of a god, and find it to be an incredibly narrow view of a much wider, diverse universe. Instead, I think that everything is conscious and everything is 'god'.
I'm not saying that they are wrong 100% of the time, only that it's just a sliver of understanding to the real nature of the universe. As I talked about in my metaphysics essay, Plato had the right idea about the cave allegory, where people who lived their entire lives have only seen the shadows on the wall, and believed it to be the real nature of reality. To me, humans have only seen the shadows, even with their understanding of religion. The great irony is that early Christian religion used these Platonic beliefs and used it to influence early Christianity, only they made an error by trying to make known the unknowable and tried to personify and constrain their monotheistic god rather than keeping this concept as an energetic, unknowable entity. Thereby they tried to learn the unknowable, which is folly. Animism and pantheism to me, takes a much more open minded view, away from these narrow constraints. The nature of reality has always been to flow, not to constrict. In this way, everything is alive.
In the Warcraft cosmos, the Light and the Void created reality. And it was the shards of Light that formed the first elementals, sending them scattering throughout the universe. I understand that the elementals wouldn't exist without the Light. But still, the Light feels inherently restrictive to me. It always has. In a way, it reminds me of the oppression of the Khala. The Light just lets you call down holy power, to heal, cleanse and enchant things, and can burn. Its skill set is incredibly narrow compared to elemental shamanism. Shamans can also do these things, but whatever they are trying to cleanse might be more difficult or easier to do, depending on what it is.
Does the Light let you call upon the clouds, the wind, lightning, ice, water, rain, and earth? No it doesn't. I can make very clear comparisons between Christianity and the Light, and between elementalism and animism. After seeing how the Light just left the krokul after their transformations, you begin to see how it's unnecessarily restrictive. Elementals just require someone to open their mind and listen to the natural world. The Light seemed to have made them deaf to the elements for so long.
After roleplaying my shaman, I began to see wind, water, earth and fire more like their own entities, (even though I've collected and worked with crystals before that point). Candle flames and calmed bodies of water had their own emotions and vibes to them, most often happy. Due to my own animistic background and beliefs, it became easy for me to see them as their own entities with their own spirits and preferences. For Nobundo, the first step was learning that everything was alive, even the inorganic.
I believe my character's connection to Argus and desire to help the elements of every single world he comes across comes from my own exotrauma with seeing worlds destroyed by malicious forces. Whether that malicious force be Amon or Sargeras, the leader of a group of demons who tried to destroy or corrupt all life (they also literally share the same voice actor.) How would you feel if you were watching omnicidal and extinction level events take place in real time among multiple planets? It wasn't just the organic beings that were hurt on Argus, but even the elemental spirits. Granted, there were no personifiable elementals like this in my main source, so this arose only through roleplay.
Moving on to the other aspect of my imagithropy, I began to see the krokul in a different way. I deeply pitied and sympathized with them. But as I roleplayed my shaman over the years, I began to see their mutations as a source of strength and spite against those who feared and despised them for what they were. The clearest observation of this was when I compare my current artwork of my shaman to the first time I drew him. He looks much more confident and sure of himself now. He looked very miserable the first time I drew him, making it clear that he was visibly mutated by the fel magic. I do actually get phantom limbs of the three prehensile back tendrils the krokul have on their back, whenever elemental magic or krokuls come up in a conversation. The back tendrils act similarly to tails. With the difference being is that they are all muscle and boneless. The older in-game models also completely lacked hooves. Instead, they had clawed toes, which I also have. Although the krokul I do play have hooves, that is something that doesn't carry over towards this cameo shift.
There have been times where my shaman had multiple opportunities to undo becoming a krokul, but I quickly dismissed the idea each time because his krokul-ness is essential to who he is as a person. And I see it as a living symbol of survival throughout all those struggles. I feel that they shouldn't try to change themselves just because they were something else in the past. This is also a theme shared by a few of my other characters, wishing to return to the state they were in the past. Only this 'state' I feel forced to return to might have to do with feeling that I can only be whole with the Khala, which as I've mentioned, I wasn't part of. Although the social pressures were there for me. In the same way, I'm pressured by society in the modern day to be something I'm not.
