I am concerned that my symbol might be evil

Bear with me. As of the time of typing I am not entirely sober.

However, if you have met me on this forum you are probably aware that I use this symbol a lot



So yeah, this symbol, the "Dark Star", has essentially been synonymous with my identity ever since I started using the internet. It'd be hard to find something that is more inextricably intertwined with what constitutes "me", as it were. In various contexts, and with variations, it has been my avatar online for pretty much as long as I can remember.

Nominally it is a colour inverted depiction of the accretion disc of a black hole.

However, I am somewhat afraid that the origin actually can be traced back to a particular influence. Whilst the moniker "Blackhole" was simply one that I adopted when I was 9 because I thought it sounded cool (I remember the moment when I decided on it clearly), the symbol may have had origins in something else. At the time, I was very much into the "Advanced Wars" video game series, which had an antagonizing force named "Black Hole".

Their symbol, in the game, was this:



Now, I realized, years later, when trying to remember the origins of the "Dark Star" symbol, that young me may well have been influenced by the above symbol of "Black Hole" in drawing what became the "Dark Star". You note the similarities; the "swirl" shape, the four arms of the "swirl".

I think that the pictogram that evolved into the "Dark Star" graphic may have started out as 9 year old me attempting to depict the four-armed swirl of "Black Hole" from the game, because it matched my username at the time.

However, the "Black Hole" logo has another, sinister influence.

According to the Advanced Wars wiki:

Which would imply that the four-armed "swirl" of the Advanced Wars "Black Hole" emblem is in fact influenced by the similarly four-armed Nazi swastika.

I don't think 9 year old me realised this.

However, it is nonetheless true that the symbol that I have been using to represent myself for the past ten years, a symbol that I have vested so much of my self into, may in fact derive, through the "Black Hole" logo from Advance Wars, from the Fascist Nazi symbol.

I don't know what to do about this

This is a symbol that has become so closely entangled with me that I can't imagine it being simply replaced. It would hang over me like a spectre of things past. I tried once to do away with it and adopt a new symbol but I ended up using the Dark Star again because it is what people knew me by.

And whilst it may be argued that when I was 9 I did not know the significance of the symbol, and thus my symbol was born in a new, innocent spirit, it is also true that, in my initial implementation, the use of the "Dark Star" was very militaristic. In the Time-Cloaked universe I created, it became the emblem of a tyrannical dictator - a character who was initially my self-insert. Whilst I was a kid and was billing "Darix Palkiren" as being a benevolent emperor, in retrospect, the universe I created was a fascist hellscape with my self-insert at the center. So, while I was oblivious to the initial inspiration for "Black Hole" from Advance Wars, the militaristic association carried itself forward and asserted itself in the implementation of the new "Dark Star" symbol, even as I made it my own.

And now, although I have come to realise that the world that my younger self created was not a desirable one, this symbol remains. I feel like it represents me, because I have used it throughout so much of my life. But in terms of symbolic weight, and meaning, it carries with it this rooting in the Nazi symbolism... Although I was not aware of it when I created the current symbol myself, it still carries that origin, and the spirit of militarism was carried through through the associations with the military imbued by the "Advanced Wars" games. So what am I to do? I have my identity tied to a symbol that has its roots in Nazism? Is it really possible to move past this origin and allow the symbol to become a good thing in and of its own? Should I be trying to stop using the symbol? And yet it has been such a huge part of my life... I can't think of what I would substitute for it, and any substitution would still carry the weight of the previous symbol, just be being the "next version" or w/e. So the association would still exist.

So what can I do? Am I able to present myself to the world without being followed by this spectre of evil?

I apologise if this was not very coherent. I was not sober while typing this. But it has bothered me for a while. I feel like my iconography is tainted but I don't know how to disentangle myself from it. I am to invested in using it, anything else would just be a poor substitution. I try to tell myself that it's far enough removed that it doesn't have to carry the spectre of its accidental origin with it, but I still feel it dogs me, telling me that in actuality every time I use the symbol I am inadvertently propagating the negative sentiment. I don't know. What should I do in regards to this?

 

fwiw your icon seems fine to me

 

well, i didn't see the association with nazism until you mentioned it. all i ever associated it with was you, with who you are, and that never involved nazism for me.

 

I just wish 9 year old hadn't been influenced in her aesthetic choices by the war games she used to play.

The thing is, I don't even definitely remember that that was the origin of the symbol, I just came across the Advance Wars Black Hole it when I was like 16 and was like... oh, this is probably what 9 y/o me was influenced in drawing, originally. I couldn't remember where the symbol came from before then.

And now idk what I'm supposed to do with the information.

Lemme sleep so I can phrase this better and more soberly.

 

And while of course I know, "this is a totally different thing", "this only means what you make it mean, it's your symbol, you decide the meaning", ever since I realised the connection it's sorta been weighing on me I guess

And yes this thread is dumb I know but I am impaired and worrisome

 

it doesn't seem like a problem to me :)

 

I just see space with it, or pinwheels. And to be honest, saying the symbol is supposed to be an altered swastika in a Japanese robot-battle game seems like a massive stretch, about as one as saying the First Order is one, and that uses a lot more deliberate Naziesque iconography in the actual movie scenes but it's still totally acceptable to wear it on a jacket. Or like saying wearing the Team Rocket 'R' is not acceptable because they're meant to invoke street gangs and the mafia.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, even if the villains of a video game use a similar symbol to your main symbol and are meant to be akin to real-life villains, that doesn't make them those villains, nor does it mean you're invoking those villains. The vast majority of people are probably going to assume you're a fan of the Black Hole side in Advanced Wars, if they realize the altered Dark Star icon you've made is meant to invoke that. Or they will associate it with you purely, as this is an altered symbol based on a pre-existing symbol you have made your own. To try and say your symbol is clearly a swastika and therefore you are Badwrong is about as illogical as saying that (using someone else on the board as an example), Jesse is a shill for the Coca Cola company because has a lot of bright candy red, black and white in his icons and those are the thematic colors of the Coca Cola brand.

 

With rounded arms, at diagonals instead of horizontal and vertical, with a hole in the middle, you took the black hole image and removed the parts that made it look like a swastika. Clever nine year old you threw out the Nazi influence without even looking at it, just nope, and kept the rest.

 

Even now, with the info about where it came from - nope, is not a Nazi symbol and doesn't evoke thoughts of Nazism.

 

to quote a friend of mine, "the Nazis ruined a lot of things, including bilateral symmetry"

another person on this list of "I didn't even think of it until you mentioned it, and even then I can't really see it"

 

I think they meant radial symmetry? [/math pedant]

 

I could be remembering wrong!

 

This looks like a scrupulosity problem. Having to dig down three layers of meaning deep to find a rando who says the original inspiration might have been a swastika (and on a wiki where any asshole can edit it with their theories, no matter how silly) and deciding your symbol is Bad is not very logical. Your brain is being a jerk again.

 

Agreeing on the scrupulosity issue. The only thought I've had about your avatar that is remotely near this ballpark is from the time I was thinking about symbols that are not Nazi swastikas but also have radial symmetry, such as Brigid's cross or the triskelion, and about how it sucked to have them compared to Nazi symbols based on a superficial technical similarity. I was scrolling through Kintsugi at the time and for a split second thought "oh, and that one too, same thing" and then immediately thought "nah, no one could mistake that for a Nazi symbol, BlackholeKG doesn't have to worry about it".

And if your brain suggests that the above paragraph is further evidence that your symbol is bad, then your brain is being a jerk again.

 

I'll be the weird odd man out and say that it always has kind of looked like a swastika to me. Though not in a way that made me think of Nazis, but more in way that made me think of Buddhism? If that makes sense. It also makes me think of some of the swastika type images seen in Celtic art. Look at Manannán run across the sea. Battersea shield's got some too. And then there is the ever so famous swastika stone named because of that fact that it looks like this. Elph has also already mentioned the crós bríde and the triskelé too. The Space symbol from Homestuck (which is just a borjgali) also makes me think of swastikas due to how it rotates.

But again not in a bad way? More in a "Oh yay Buddhism" way or in a "Oh this looks kind of like this very common and recurring type of symbol seen throughout the world that we've collectively dubbed swastikas regardless of origin". But I'm an odd man out definitely and most people aren't out scouring the globe for different swastika type images. As we can see here most people didn't even think about it until you mentioned this.

As far as Black Hole's symbol I will say that yeah it is honestly probably likely that they intended it to look like a swastika. Japan has a religion that makes use of it and also has very weird...thing with Nazis and Nazi imagery. So at the least it's possible.

 

Late to this conversation, but as someone who is Very Interested in religious and occult symbolism, I would like to point out that the swastika has its origins as a solar symbol, and it was a sacred symbol in Buddhism as well as certain Native American cultures long before it was appropriated by the nazis.

Interestingly, some of these cultures have chosen to retire their solar symbol out of compassion for those who suffered and died at nazis hands. But if your Dark Star really does inherit this legacy, I find it really fascinating, magically and symbolically!

First of all, you've mutated the shape and meaning, definitively making it something different from the ancient symbol that is (maybe) it's ancestor. It is no longer the sun, it a dark star, a black hole. It no longer hearkens back to the past when humans conceptualized the sun as a wheel rolling through the heavens in a geocentric cosmos; it signifies modernity and futurism, understanding of cosmic phenomena through scientific observation. And as the sun is a star and a black hole is a former star, the Dark Star arising from the ashes of a corrupted solar symbol is powerful!

The mythology you've connected with it can also be seen as part of the arc of redeeming/replacing the fallen solar wheel. Your symbol's history carried forward from a juvenile concept of a just society that echoes militaristic fascism but it has been moved forward to symbolize a mature vision of a compassionate individual seeking communion with others in an effort to actualize a better world through small acts and the cooperation of small, voluntary social groups. Like, your symbol's mythology explicitly rejects everything the nazis stood for (not to mention totally ditching their aesthetic of sharp bold lines in favor organic cosmic curves) and it does that not because you conceived it that way on purpose but because you carried it with you as you grew up and learned how to be the best person you can be.

That is a very powerful symbol. I would use it to signify the triumph of truth over ideology, hope over history, and cooperation over authoritarianism.

(admittedly, I'm speculating a little on the compassionate cooperation stuff, but that's the prevailing vibe i get from this forum and its participants)