Skip to content
Currently On Hiatus: Please Enjoy A New Reader Question Every Weekday!

21 Comments

Totem animals are only north american? I was always under the impression it was a sort of ..standard concept, filling in for all the common ‘animal spirit’ beliefs and myths and such all over the globe from different cultures and interpretations.

I think animism (‘everything has a spirit’) in its broadest form is found all over the world, but there’s a lot of diversity in the details. Believing that everything is alive in some way doesn’t have to mean claiming one of those spirits to represent yourself/your family.

As for Australian Aboriginal beliefs, I’m not Aboriginal and therefore not any kind of authority, but this site seems to give a good starting point regarding common threads of beliefs across the continent: https://www.australianstogether.org.au/discover/indigenous-culture/aboriginal-spirituality/

From this and other sources, I gather that totemic spirits aren’t uncommon in Australian Aboriginal traditions, and can take the form of animals, plants, forces of nature such as wind and rain, and/or the entire spirit of the land the clan has stewardship of. Generally, the whole clan shares a totem; some clans also have second, personal totems for individuals.

So the cassowary totem spirit is plausible.

(Open to corrections from anyone who knows more about this. This comment is the result of quick, shallow research, and I’m well aware I might be very wrong.)

You are right on track, Silver. Most Australian Aboriginal tribal groups have their individual versions of spirits that would correlate to totemic spirits so while I do not remember one that has a cassowary in one of their stories, it is most plausible that there would be/have been one out there.

You’ve probably already answered this, so this is more of a question to the rest of the community as to where I can find the answer, but to what extent are creatures from Lovecraft Mythos canon in Skin Deep?

iirc, they’re not canon because lovecraft’s work has not entered public domain, therefore Kory can’t use their likeness to profit off of in her comic. Copyright law gets awfully weird about ip’s here in the states, so she’s relying on myths that have entered public domain or are part of our cultural history and, therefore, diverse in origin. I think there was a reader question where she addresses this, if I find it i’ll link it in a reply

The cassowary looks like a retiree spending all day in a Las Vegas casino (not the newer ones, the ones in old Vegas), shoveling coins in a slot machine with a cocktail in one hand, chainsmoking cigarettes in the other, interrupted only for hitting the buffet…

Hey since we are on the subject of totems, what’s your totem Kory? I think I missed it. Mines a buffalo.

She’s a sphinx.

Leave a Reply to SilentJayCancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *