Ellis Arcwolf
So you wonder where's my four-leaf clover
I been lying, I'm no one's good luck charm
Where's my bag of dust? See my wings all gossamer
Now you're wondering where you're dream's gone wrong
Where the shadows fell and you don't belong
— Lollipop Epitaph, Purgatory, 13 Hearts to Start a Storm (2017)
About the Author
Wanna know a little bit more about Ellis?
This is the place!
Riko the Husky
Because she's too cute not to discuss at length.
Support Me!
Find out how you can help me do more, and why maybe you might really like to! 😻Note: The link below will take you to GoFundMe, an external website. The menu link above does the same thing, duh.
Current Projects
Check out the latest on my work in progress:
The Heralds of Jijivisa
Drintera
The Rival Dyad Model
Blank
Social Media
It sucks, but we have to have it nowadays. This is why we need punk so badly.
About the Author
Hello, I'm Ellis Arcwolf (she/her). I'm a 42-year-old queer, trans, and neurodivergent Latina author of speculative and transgressive fiction, currently living in Iowa.I was born in Miami to Colombian and Cuban immigrants and have been a storyteller since before I knew my first words. My path here has been a winding one: I studied English and Philosophy at Tulane, earned a Master's in Clinical Psychology, and for nine years, I've had the honor of serving as a Licensed Professional Counselor for at-risk populations.My own story is one of resilience. Early childhood trauma gave me an unexpected gift: a way to protect my storytelling self, my muse, from harm. I learned to tell myself stories to soothe a turbulent inner world, a practice that lies at the core of my creative mission.Today, that mission continues. Whether I'm writing short stories, preparing my first novel, or running vibrant roleplaying events for my community in Final Fantasy XIV, my work is about building worlds where we can explore, heal, and find ourselves.Thank you for being here and sharing my worlds with me.
Riko the Husky
She was born in 2019. We found each other in April 2021. Today, she's six years old, and no one in the world could possibly claim to love me more than she.I owe Riko this page. She's saved my life so many more times than I dare to count, and she deserves way more love than this simple page can represent.We do what we can with what we have.
Pride & Prejudice
A Call to Dismantle Whiteness From Within
by Ellis Arcwolf
As a "white" Hispanic person, my position in this conversation is...idiosyncratic.One day, I'm a victim of racism. Then next, I'm directly benefiting from white privilege. It's all enough to make you dizzy. It depends on the season—my skin color changes drastically with the sun. It depends on how tired or inebriated I am—the Spanish comes out more if I get a little tipsy or turvy. It depends on which of my cultural behaviors are showing. And, of course, it depends on the mood of the white person in front of me.Living on that ridiculous, flimsy line is why I have this present need to talk about "whiteness," and why I think that "Allyship 101" has long since shown us it isn't enough.The construct of "whiteness" is a tool of oppression. Those of us I'm talking to? We know this already. It's Allyship 101. But it's not just a weapon aimed at BIPOC. It's also a poison fed to white people. It has robbed them of their actual culture. It has whisked away their German, Irish, Scottish, or Polish heritage and replaced it with an empty, meaningless abyss whose only defining feature is "not being one of them" and appropriating every new fad coming out of the third world country featured on ChildVision this fiscal quarter.Why does this matter? Because without culture, you cannot have pride. And pride isn't just about "feeling good." It's about building strength. It's about forging resilience within yourself. It's about learning to show esteem for something greater than yourself, and then translating that esteem into self-esteem, a practice many of us would benefit greatly from. You can't get that from the poverty of melanin in your skin. You get that from the meaning that comes with building and being a part of a cultural legacy, whether it's just starting or whether it's older than dirt. (Lookin at you, Jews! Sup! Love you! 💙)We—Black people, indigenous peoples, and peoples of color—are able to stand against systemic, violent, and often deadly oppression because we have a strength you may not see, and our cultural pride serves as the backbone of that strength.
Chinese Americans know they built the railroads, and they hold that pride even as people shout at them for speaking their own language on their own property. And this is after they've agreed to try capitalism out because we've been saying it was cool for decades. So it's extra rude on our part.
African Americans know they are the backbone of American culture and vibrancy, and they hold that pride even as the nation punishes them for it. And it's really hard to argue with a straight face that people with their history should in any way not be exceptionally pissed about it. Most are just trying to move the fuck on from our ancestors' bullshit, and that truly speaks to their character as a people.
Hispanics know we created the foundations for international diplomacy, and we hold that pride even as we're told to farm berries and take out the trash. I've literally been practicing therapy with a client when they told me that Trump was going to take away my citizenship. After all, I wasn't American (you know, despite being acculturated as an American my entire life, being a natural-born citizen--a Constitutionally protected status in the U.S.--and having lived in this country my entire life, not to mention knowing English a hundred times better than they did), so I didn't belong here. And I never even spoke a word of Spanish to her. It was February, so I looked white as the driven snow. No idea what clued her into my diversity, but hate doesn't actually need a reason, does it?
We are able to live vibrant lives against this impossible burden because we have a shared pride in who we are.
Is There Such a Thing as an "American" Culture?
Yes, "American" is a culture, and a very complicated one involving rites of passage like homecoming and the prom, annual cultural festivals like the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards, cultural milestones like Black Friday and the Opening Day of Major League Baseball (marking the official end of winter in the U.S.), and even our very own cuisine, including delicacies like Chicken Fried Steak and the Chocolate Chip Cookie. We love guns, rock-n-roll, drugs, sex, sports, and explosions, and we pride ourselves on our love of competition. We are raised to believe that we can do anything if we only set our minds to it (note: intersectionality may cause experiences to vary).And like any culture, we have our own litany of negative characteristics. We're xenophobic and almost enjoy being cruel to people we don't know. Many Americans seem to think rights are only theirs, and we behave that way on the world stage. You're often one of us until you prove you're not, and then we will fucking make you pay for it. And it doesn't take much if you're not don't fit the American ideal: a thing we have in the U.S. that most other cultures only have when they're theocratically bound up with religion. Despite our intense and somewhat obsessive attachment to our quasi-Christian traditions, boy is this ideal a secular one: a man, a wife (not a woman, mind you), two-point-five-children, a dog, and a fence. But not too aggressive a fence. Just one that the police can easily tell which side of it the garden boy is on.We are big on punishment, but not so much on accountability. We are an obnoxious people for many reasons. Many reasonable. And a few less so, like, dude.... Let us smile from time to time. It feels nice. Go read Dostoevsky or something and be frowny over there. Goodness gracious.
So how are white people (you, presumably, dear Reader) to stand against the white supremacy that holds us aloft, if we have nothing to keep us from falling after? Shallow appropriation isn't pride. It's just consumption. How do we stand up against anything without any sense of esteem in who we are and how we came to be? Without knowing that you're good, and that you're loved, and that you belong somewhere?This is why the current "Allyship 101" framework, which demands that white people "own their whiteness," is an Ouroboric Catch-22: a self-devouring trap that leaves behind neither mouse, nor trap, nor house. It asks folks who benefit from white privilege to identify with and cling to the very poison that hollowed them out. It asks them to be accountable by reinforcing the tool of oppression.I reject every tool of oppression. Especially the double-bladed ones. They hurt the most.Here's the different path: True accountability is not owning "whiteness." It's dismantling it. With fire. 🔥
Racial Colorblindness: The Trojan Horse that Keeps on Taking
This is not a call for "colorblindness." Please don't think that.Even if racial colorblindness existed (it doesn't), it's only homogeneity with extra steps. I couldn't imagine living in a more dreary, dead world than a colorblind one. No, this is the exact opposite. It's an active, conscious, and fiery rejection of the "white" label. It's the hard work of reclaiming the spirit that construct stole from you. Of finding your strength in real roots, not in the parasitic fiction that was built on our oppression.
The Unique Experience of the Multi-Rooted
But what if you can't find roots already attached to you? Many of us have trails of dead and forgotten ancestors. Some were stolen from us by genocide. Others sacrificed everything, even identity, to ensure their next generation would live to have children of their own. And some are a beautifully messy quilt that is practically impossible to make sense of without 23andMe and Walter Mercado working together in the ultimate astrogenohistorical team-up.So what if you look back, and the trail is cold as Nazi's heart? What if the erasure was so complete, the assimilation so total, that all you can think to call yourself is "mixed" or "a mutt"? What if, like me, you are a Third Culture Kid (TCK), a bridge born and raised between worlds, belonging fully to none? What if you descend from a melting pot of so many tribes that claiming any of them feels like a little like wearing problematic costume on Halloween night?This feels like a void. But all blank slates are empty until you decide it's time to etch on them. And that's what we who have little to no legacy to inherit have instead: a cultural tabula rasa, from which we can forge any identity that we wish.Many of us—children of diaspora, immigrants, refugees, and those whose European ancestors dissolved their heritage for the privilege of acceptance—share this same lived experience. Our community lies with those that share this lived experience. This is what culture is: a shared moral and historical consciousness, and indeed often one born of suffering and disconnection.And after all, speciation only occurs when some catastrophe forces a single species apart for long enough that it evolves into two. No species is born from joy, rainbows, and dreams. And no culture either. This pain is not a bug of being human; it's a feature designed to allow us to survive catastrophe after catastrophe after catastrophe. We often forget how comfortably we live now, even the poorest of us, compared to the average hunter-gatherer in prehistoric times.If you are one of us, your path isn't reclamation. It's construction. Your claim isn't a legacy of blood; it's one of intentionality.
How to Build a Culture Out of a Shitty History
Here's a proscription for building a new culture from the ashes of a history that was lost or stolen:
The Foundation: Moral Clarity. Your inheritance is not folklore or language; it is the honesty to see your family's complex history for what it is. It is the self-awareness to own the painful truths—the profiteering, the complacency, the bigotry—and build your pride on the commitment to do better. My own family history includes the harboring of Nazis and the taking of cartel money; it is a story with full of villains and devoid of heroes. I am proud to build my culture out of the ashes of that corruption, because my people got their comeuppance. That is a happy ending.
You're Not Rootless; You're Multi-Rooted. You do not have to choose one pond. Your roots can dig into many, many different ponds of flavors, colors, and smells without number. Your culture can be the best ideas from Western and Eastern philosophy, Mediterranean cuisine, a cosmopolitan view of human unity, and an unshakeable commitment to justice. (That one's mine, and some of you already share it, you just don't realize you've always belonged with me. 💙) And your roots are not static like a tree's. You, lucky little jumping bean that you are, don't have cell walls. And that means you can shake your ass, raise your arms, and identify as you please now, another way tomorrow, and another way still the next day. We have labels to help us understand ourselves, not to bind our lived experience into a happy little Jack in the Box. That just results in you living your life waiting to be sprung out into the world and proven for the fraud you have to be to fit so well.
Your Culture Is Shared Consciousness. Your community lies with others who share this lived experience. Find them. Find us. We're everywhere, all over the world! Find other TCKs, the other assimilated, the other bridges. Find the people who also feel that "disconnection" that is the often the price of moral clarity. Find those who have a profound cultural hunger, whose first (or just whose present) community doesn't scratch all their deeper cultural needs. (For example, I kinda like having my Latine people, my LGBTQ+ people, my Geek people... Intersectionality is many things, and it is absolutely an excuse to make found family.) This connecting forges a stronger bond than any ancient bloodline. (And you know it's true cuz a lot of ancient bloodlines aren't doing so good after a couple decades of "keeping the bloodline pure." 😬)
Community is found in the quiet, consistent connection with just one or two other people that you love and that love you. Look for those individuals and start building a new, shared culture with them right where you are. This isn't a lesser path. It's the work of architects, not heirs. And architects are way cooler than heirs. Architects are celebrated for the masterworks they build. Heirs are "notable" for the accomplishments of everyone else.
The Work of Solidarity
This isn't an "out" from accountability. This is actual accountability, and you know it because accountability is a sign of emotional maturity and tends to result in growth, not more suffering.When you find (or build) your culture, you stop being a "white ally"—not really a thing, sorry to give you the bad news 😿—and you start being a person. A German, an Irish, a Scottish, a Polish, a Breton, a Danish, a Dutch, an Italian, a Greek, a Portuguese, a Finnish, a Belarusian, an American, a Belizian, a Creole, a Slovak, a Croatian, an Euskaldunak, a Sami, a Romani, a Frisian person, a person with a people... who is allied with POC against the shared enemy that is the construct of "whiteness" itself: a construct that serves only to purify everything it touches of life, meaning, and reason.That's the solidarity, I think. That's the work. And it's doable!We, the people who benefit from white privilege, need to make a better world for POC now. We, POC, are owed that. (See what I did there? 😉) I could definitely name, like, five populations that should come ahead of any of mine, but we do that with you, not against you, not over you, and—without turning White Replacement Theory into a vicious reality and making white supremacists somehow both really happy and really sad at the same time—it's literally impossible without you.So we make it work. Somehow. Fuck purity tests. This is about humanity. And we fucking suck sometimes. Acting like we're all beautiful and perfect little precious flower petals is clearly fucking us up. Learning to live with the discomfort of a shitty history is part of growing up, and everyone has to grow up some time.I assure you, every POC has contended with what it's like to have a shitty history. Some of us contend with a shitty present. We know it's possible to do. I believe in you, and if this essay is helpful, then fuck, yes, please! 💙
This Is About So Much More Than Race
There are other bigotries. So many bigotries. We are nothing if not creative. The ancient Greeks had up to seven different words for love. And we are just as good at diversifying the quality of our hate. But don't worry. We'll fight them all. We have the energy, the motivation, and the fucking done-with-this-shittedness to make it happen.We're not gonna get 'em all, but the point can't be to get rid of evil. In a universe where you have to eat to live and babies can die of nothing at all? Nah. That's impossible. The point is to corral it like an angry moose and point it towards the dark metal box that it just keeps getting out of every so often. And to minimize that frequency as much as humanly possible.I suppose this is an introductory essay, in a sense. Let's call it a class on allyship: "Allyship 306: Growing Beyond the Identity of Oppressor."
One Last Caveat That It Would Be Very, Very Bad to Fail to Understand
If you're a person who benefits from white privilege, and you wanna use this framework, I am thrilled that it spoke to you. Please, never, ever, ever use it like a weapon against BIPOC. I swear to every god humanity has ever invented I'll come find you and rip my entire essay out of your brain because you won't have deserved it.If a BIPOC ever calls you "white" because they are correctly identifying the privilege that you hold and that they do not, you most certainly do not get to "correct" them by saying, "Actually, I'm German."If you do that, you have failed all of us, you've failed yourself, you've failed your people, and you've missed the entire point of everything we've been discussing here.Many of your ancestors stole your culture from you by joining hands with white supremacists in a bid to survive. You absolutely should be working to find culture again, or to build your own if nature and the whims of evil people designed to keep one from you. But the right to correct us? To tell us that our lived experience is wrong?That was never yours.This framework is about your work, not a pass to exercise power over ours. When discussing race and racism with BIPOC, silence and compassion will remain the best strategy of the racially privileged for a long time to come.
Urban Occult Punk
Urban Occult Punk blends spiritual rebellion with city grit. It celebrates the gutter trash that wield low magic as a weapon against oppression. The core is our punk ethos: anti-authoritarian, DIY, and asking, "Peace for whom?"The answer: Fuck your peace. 🔥
The Urban Occult Punk Manifesto
by Ellis Arcwolf
"Peace for whom?"We are demanded to "preserve the peace," to not rock the boat, to stay quiet while others are bullied, marginalized, and broken. This kind of peace works great for the oppressor. It's a peace that ensures the comfort of the privileged and the suffocating silence of a status quo that benefits the powerful at the expense of everyone else.We reject this peace. We are the storm breaks this false peace.Urban Occult Punk is a genre that must exist. It's not just an aesthetic; it's a response. It's a rebellion against a modern, 21st-century world that demands conformity while gifting only spiritual isolation.
The Pillars of Our Punk
Urban Occult Punk supported by three pillars, each uniquely loved for their contribution to our genre:
The Urban. Behold our multifarious and protean setting. It's the 21st-century modern world, the concrete and steel, the neon and the static, the crowded subways, and the digital isolation that we've all come to know and love. It's the reality of a life lived in a system that tries to pave over all individuality, history, and power for the benefit of a select and deeply disconnected few.
The Occult. Behold our most versatile weapon. This isn't the spic-and-span magic of hidden societies or fantastical schools hidden away by transphobic witches. This is the low magic, the grit. It's power ground from pain, not revealed from on high. It’s sigils spray-painted in alleys, rituals performed in abandoned warehouses, and power drawn from the forgotten genii loci of a place. It's spirituality as a brazen act of defiance against a sterile, corporate, and technological world that tells us there's nothing left to believe in.
3. The Punk. Behold our despised ethos. It is the why that inspires us to write and that shoves our characters across their narratives. Punk is anti-authoritarian, anti-establishment, and fiercely individualistic. It is a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) philosophy. When the world refuses to grant you community, Punk says, "Build your own, motherfucker." When the system denies you power, Punk says, "Make your own and stop being a bitch." It is the angry, screaming, compassionate heart of the genre.
Why This Genre? And Why Now? And Why Did You Make Me Read All This? What Kind of a Monst—
Urban Occult Punk fills a gap left by its older cousins. And we're just gonna go ahead and slide on in here....*upsets Urban Fantasy and Cyberpunk as she pushes them out of her way with her wiggling butt*
We're not Urban Fantasy.
Urban Fantasy is often about hidden magical worlds co-existing with ours. The rebellion is in knowing the secret. In Urban Occult Punk, the rebellion is in using power. The magic isn't a secret to be kept; it's a weapon to be aimed directly at the systems of oppression.And the systems sure as fuck understand and will wield that power with impunity if we allow them to. The local preacher isn't kidding about healing the sick and about surviving cobra snake bites. The goth magician on Las Vegas Strip did actually just walk through that glass. That corporation you hate is actually run by a demon who puts cursed rat flesh into all our cereal to cause us to sin. Meanwhile, a bank employs magi to enchant their commercials and make an entire population of people go apply for loans. And the president has magi on call, too, in case of supernatural emergencies.All over the real world, real people with rational minds, intelligent and well-educated people, believe that possession, magic, astrology, ghosts, mediums, and psychic powers are a part of our everyday lives. We're anything but a secular, "disbelieving" society. Need proof? A 2020 Gallup poll asked Americans whether they'd vote for a "well-qualified" candidate from another group of people. An atheist candidate rated second lowest, immediately after Muslim, but at least higher than socialists—you know, the group we've specifically spent half a century demonizing. So yeah, nah. We ain't secular.And if magic is an arms race, then let's kick the tires and light the fires, baby. We've got systems to burn. 🔥
We're not Cyberpunk.
Cyberpunk's rebellion is technological and transhumanistic. Which is awesome, and we support it. But in Urban Occult Punk the real rebellion is a psychospiritual one. In a world obsessed with the digital communication, social media, and performative allyship, the greatest power lies in the analog, the ancient, the spiritual, and the human. Urban Occult Punk tells stories about the soul fighting back against the grinder that the world around us has grown into.Urban Occult Punk is a genre for the disenfranchised. It's for those who look at the "peaceful" world around them and want to scream because all they see is a glaring, maddeningly hilarious lie. It gives voice to that fury, and it gives a framework for the rebellion that must follow it.Otherwise, what the fuck are we even doing?It's not just about magic in the city. It's about finding the magic in the gutter and using it to tear down the walls.