#Thanatophobia

[chiefyarts]

Thanatophobia

[comic-art-showcase]

alternate/unused piece for the Batober prompt 'Heartbreak' by Chris Samnee

[cherries-in-wine]

My thanatophobia started when my dad pulled me aside when I was 7 and handed me a calculator telling me I'm only going to live until about 60 so I need to calculate how many years i have left. Turn those years into days and the days into hours and subtract 8 hours from each day that I'll spend sleeping. Then he held the calculator up to my face and told me this is the amount of time I have left and i need to make the most of it. Weirdly motivating but now I have an immense fear of aging and death and that's how I justify neglecting sleep because I'm technically getting more hours out of my life.

[velvet-vox]

The horrifying humanity of Lord Shen

One of the less talked about things that help Lord Shen to be the fascinating and complex antagonist that he is are his facial expressions:

Anytime throughout the movie that Shen shows his face, we are met with an extremely detailed and eye-catching emotion, accentuated by the movie actively refusing to let us see the rest of Shen's design clearly; when you think about it, Shen is very overly designed, with the iron talons, the robe adornments, and his massive tail, yet the one thing that we are constantly paying attention to is his face.

His face is also fairly detailed, mind you, but is not the only part of his body to be like this, yet most of the time, the camera focuses only on that aspect of his appearance, and when Shen is covered in shadow, which happens a lot, the only thing that we can pay attention to is his red eyes, engulfing the rest of his body.

Shen's facial expressions do a really great job at communicating to the audience so much extra depth about his character: they give us a glimpse of his psychology and make us understand the fundamental flaws that define Shen as a person.

His expressiveness is especially noticeable when compared to the other three main villains;

Tai Lung barely emotes, except to show his anger; as a matter of fact, what I've just said is a lie, he actually has a lot of different facial expressions, especially after his escape from jail, but the thing is that we are never meant to focus on them: Tai Lung's martial prowess is the main focus of his character, so every scene he's in capitalises on it, his emotional state comes second, which helps those moments when he's actually super emotive (the fight with Tigress, Shifu's apology, his mental breakdown at the end of the movie) to hit that much harder.

The Chameleon makes a lot of different facial expressions but they don't communicate any more depth about her character; it's hard to say at this point, since I've only seen Kung Fu Panda 4 once, but if I were to take a guess, the intro sequence of the movie were The Chameleon pretends to be Tai Lung is the most depth her character ever gets in the story: she is a massive fangirl.

I'll probably have to rewatch her sequences a couple more times to make sure I'm not getting anything wrong, but as of right now, I am going to take a wild assumption and say that The Chameleon prefers her trasformations over her real self because she doesn't like herself for who she is. This is mostly unrelated to our current discussion, but since an analysis of The Chameleon is extremely far away, I might as well mention this observation now.

Kai's facial expressions give us a lot of insight into his mind, but not as much into his psychology like Shen's face does: in a way, Kai is the most emotive of the Kung Fu Panda villains, since, as we're going to see very soon, Shen keeps a lot of his emotional turmoil for himself, he doesn't want other people to understand what is going on in his mind and how actually scared of everything he is; Tai Lung also practices self-restraint but for different reasons, and The Chameleon is still yet to be fully understood by myself, but Kai is always sincere about his emotional state, he's angry when he's angry, flattered when he's flattered, and he's scared when he's scared. This doesn't mean that Kai doesn't have anymore depth that can be extrapolated from a contradiction between what he says/does and what his face says/does, it just means that Kai is someone who's very clear about his emotions, probably because he lacks the childhood trauma that defies Shen and Tai, and also because he's already dead.

Kai's inner thought process is that of a raging bull: clear as day. He doesn't have any emotional vulnerability to hide because he doesn't feel like anything can hurt him anymore, so he doesn't bother with keeping a facade since he's not afraid of anything.

Speaking of emotional state, it's time we take a look at this schizophrenic turkey's mental health and how the expressions that he makes leak out the true reason behind his seemingly unending hatred of Po.

You may now be thinking "But isn't Lord Shen's hatred of Po kinda obvious? He hates him, because he perceives him as a threat to his plans, and because he's evil and all that jazz" and while you are partially correct for that, I want to expand upon that obvious notion, and reveal why every time Shen interacts with Po he seemingly treats him like his life long arch nemesis:

You see, Lord Shen isn't just simply afraid of Po....

He's fricking paranoid of him.

Do you remember the whole training montage where Po and the Furious Five are travelling through the country to reach Gongmin City while Shen is getting ready to start the invasion?

It's a pretty cool sequence and all, especially from the perspective of the six..... but why is Lord Shen acting like that?

In KFP3, where we get a similar scene with Kai, it makes perfect sense from both the hero and the villain point of view: Kai, at this point, has been established as a massive threat to Po, so Po is keenly aware of the danger that he poses and is training like hell in order to defeat him; while Kai, who has now almost managed to destroy everything that Oogway has created, is impatient of taking out the last remaining pieces of Oogway's legacy, showcased by the angry way in which he punches the obstacles in his path to the village.

But here, while Po is simply preparing himself to fight the next big threat, Shen is going the extra mile of refining his combat prowess for an invasion that is going to be executed through the usage of gunpowder.

... A bit excessive, don't you think? This doesn't really mean much right now, but let's keep this in mind for later.

After defeating the Council of the Masters and dethroning the throne, Shen immediately asks the Soothsayer to tell him his future, but not before ensuring that his weapon is in the right position for him to continue his monologue.

Keep in mind: these two probably haven't met in 30 years, and while the true extent of their relationship is up to the fans head canons, it's pretty easy to assume that these two were probably closer at a certain point in their lives; therefore, if Shen was so eager to know his destiny to the point of not even wanting to gloat at the old goat, he must have been motivated by either one of these reasons:

A; He wanted to get this over quickly so that he could focus on something else, learning about his future and then finally getting rid of the Soothsayer;

B; Shen's brain is entirely concerned with his plans of world dominance, plans that would greatly benefit from the Soothsayer's ability of predicting the future to be completely foolproof.

C; He has been thinking of nothing else for the past 30 years.

While A is quickly disproved by a later scene where Shen let's go of the goat, B is most likely also not the answer, as despite it being the most logical course of action for the young Lord, the same scene that disproves A also denies B: why would Shen let go of his greatest source of intel? Just because he needed a way to make peace with the past? It's still possible that the thought of using the Soothsayer's magical abilities may have crossed Shen's mind, but I doubt it ever was his main concern.

No, Shen immediately started going after the answers that he sought for one and one reason only: it's been tormenting him for decades.

The way Lord Shen rehashes his monologue with his sword before meeting Po is not that of a cold, calculating mastermind making sure everything goes according to plans; it's the way a schizophrenic freak would try his hardest to keep everything under control.

Shen is in constant need of wanting everything to be how he has envisioned it, like that cannon from earlier, because otherwise he starts to crack down under the pressure.

His nervousness becomes even more apparent in the first segment of his developmental footage; even if all of these are cut scenes that were never intended to be in the movie, they reinforce the idea that the writers always intended to portray Shen as anxious in this scene.

And once Lord Shen is finally about to meet Po, he indeed starts to crack down under the pressure; Shen has feared that this day might arrive his entire life, fought so hard for this moment to not come true, and now that it's finally here, he's absolutely terrified.

Notice how Lord Shen immediately reaches for his feather-knife once he hears the big bad fat panda coming closer: even if the whole scene is played for comedic effect, you can't deny the fact that Shen is truly panicking here, the very next shot of his face right before the meeting makes you assume that Shen thinks that he's going to die.

And I believe this exact fear of death, more than anything else, is what drove Shen to commit genocide towards the Pandas, it's the true reason behind any of his actions, made worse by all of the other issues Shen has:

Lord Shen suffers from Thanatophobia.

Thanatophobia is an intense fear of death or the dying process. Another name for this condition is “death anxiety.” Those suffering from this mental health disorder might be anxious about their own death or the death of someone they care about. Psychotherapy can help most people overcome this disorder, but as you can very well imagine, there weren't many therapists in ancient China, so I doubt Shen had any concrete way of overcoming this struggle, especially in his current household, who most likely put high societal pressure on his dilapidated mind.

Here's a link to a site that better talks about this stuff. Of course, if you want to truly verify the validity of my source, I encourage you to seek out a professional, and please don't use what I tell you as proof for any real life debate.

I personally believe that diagnosing Lord Shen with Thanatophobia is the best way to put the actions of his character into perspective; the visceral way in which Shen talks to Po doesn't make a lot of sense if Shen only sees Po as a threat; no, Po is a constant nightmare looming inside his mind, and has been driving him insane for years, so now Shen wants to even the favour with the panda by slowly breaking his mind apart before he finally manages to kill him.

For Po, his conflict with Shen wasn't personal until he learned of his past, but for Shen, it was personal right from the moment he overheard the prophecy.

The complete and utter alienation of Tai Lung

[spenaspeaks]

Half of me: Everyday is fucking torture, when will it end.

Other half: *heart races a little faster than normal* I am going to die tonight and I am so Afraid.

[loopingcat]

Damn seeing someone that I used to be really super close with, is all slowly fading away which hurt but what make it 10x worse is that I had thanatophobia (fear of losing someone you love) which make this feeling even worse then ever and hit even harder then before🙁

[y-vna]

short break zoooooom (?)

READ THIS TY: not a clout post i don't really want people commenting saying they want me to have a good break and get better. Ik you're all in the right place in your heart, but i genuinely just wrote this to ask for people to help me relate to whatever I said at the bottom of this post.. I wanna get better. And i think if i talk to people who understand it then i can do that.

--

i feel like when i say i'm taking a break, it turns out to just be a day long, but I might delete the app for a week or so (ik the expectations are low af). Been suffering from a really bad existential crisis i can't get over. Basically a really disturbing case of Thanatophobia i just can't function normally anymore i can't stop feeling anxious at all. It might never go away but i hope to get better, because for now, it's genuinely affecting my mindset i don't even WANT to make moodboards. 😭😭

i get it, creators take breaks all the time and you might think it's annoying when they keep announcing it (lmao meanwhile i make a bad mental health post every few months), but hey, it's my blog so whatever. 🫠

--

hi pls help me haha: um btw if you've ever had crippling bad Thanatophobia (go search it up), I would appreciate it if you could help me get over it maybe, it's been a terrifying week mentally woohoo! Somewhere in pms/dms or anywhere you can reach me, it would help a lot if you share your experience growing from that fear. bc i'm slowly mentally deterioriting. (also it would help if you're atheist because the religious part of it just won't help me i'm sorry.) 🫡🫡🫥🫥🫨🫨

or maybe this post will get deleted and i'll keep coming here to distract myself idk whatever i feel like. okay yay thanks for reading ily.

[gametourism]

Outer Wilds, Ash Twin at the end of the cycle gif, tw flashing lights

[ID : a gif showing the sun collapsing. right after it explodes in a blue flash. while ash twin obstructs a direct view on it, the effects still envelope the hourglass twins. /End ID]

[mortalityisoverrated]

I so desperately don't want to stop existing. I want to keep learning and thinking and feeling, I want to experience everything I possibly can, I want to see how the future looks. I try to live life to the fullest but I already had such a late start, being disabled and too poor to afford care until very recently. It was only through sheer luck that I was able to get to where I am now in life, and the second I started to really enjoy myself, I suddenly can't escape the knowledge that one day it will end. And life after death being the same as life before birth does not comfort me. I know what happened before I was born, I get to experience the past to a certain extent while I'm alive, but the future? I will never see the future. It feels like the world is ending, my chest gets tight, my heart starts beating so fast and loud in my ears, my brain gets cold and fuzzy, my fingertips go numb and tingly, and suddenly I'm hyperventilating and dizzy and sobbing on the floor.

There's just not enough time. I'm so young, only 26, and yet the past decade went by so fast it's like I was 16 and I blinked and now I'm close to 30. And sometimes, the fact that I'm so young also scares me. It means that the worst thing to happen to me probably hasn't happened yet. So many diseases I could get, accidents that could happen. And then BOOM, no more me. No more of everything I've ever known. I smoked heavily for 8 years, and even though I've now quit, what if those 8 years were enough to end me? I just hope that when I do die, I'm not aware that I'm about to die, because I know that I wouldn't enjoy my final seconds. I would be desperately clinging to life, begging a god I've never believed in to please let me stay a little longer. Please let me exist just for a few more hours, days, years. Don't take this away from me, please.

Sometimes I write in my journal little messages to future humans, where I give consent to bring me back. Just in case in some distant future they finally crack the code, please I give you permission, please bring me back, please give me another chance. I find myself imagining an ethics board of futuristic scientists all debating whether or not it's morally okay to bring past humans back to life. They will be using quantum computers to scan massive databases of archived journals written by ancient humans, and then they will find my little plea. And they'll bring me back.

[ineffablelvrs]

not religious not atheist but a secret third thing (too scared of death to let myself think that there's no afterlife so i desperately cling to the thought that there is something after death)

[nevis-the-skeleton]

Thanatophobia: Fear of death

TW: Gore, bones

Sixth fear of october! Death is inevitable, and forever

[sketchedasclepion]

Do you like CCCC? Do you like Phasmophobia?

Boy, do I have the AU for you.

THANATOPHOBIA

An AU where Heart, Mind, and Soul are ghost hunters for Harmony's Helpful Haunt Hunters. There is a thread in CJFS for those who want all the lore, but I'm open to asks about them too :3

[amalgamcorps]

hii these next few days are gonna be pretty difficult for me, my girlfriends family dog passed away and we where all there for the euthanasia and it has filled me with a lot of complex emotions.. he was a really good boy and we go over to their house a lot so its just empty feeling of a lost family member right now.. rip rugby goodest doggy ever

[maxdrawer]

Thanatophobia - Fear of losing someone you love / Fear of death

Basically, this is Chara after discovering that she lend herself and Asriel to their own death, meaning that she lost her best friend and her own life (If you ask for the pronouns, on my AU she's a girl) and this is where the seed of all of her depression started growing (on my AU this should happen on WaterFall)

By the way, I got inspired by @shimmershy on this drawing:

(Also, Shimmershy, sorry if it annoys you, I'm just a big fan)

[mustymausoleum]

trying to sleep and thanatophobia hits me with the momento mori

[themogaidragon]

Thanatophobia Pride Flag

[IMAGE ID: a flag with five horizontal stripes with the central one being bigger. Their colors are, from top to bottom, grey, brown, white, grey and dark green. In the center of the flag there is a dark brown symbol of a skull. END ID]

[IMAGE ID: a flag with five horizontal stripes with the central one being bigger. Their colors are, from top to bottom, grey, brown, white, grey and dark green. END ID]

Thanatophobia: irrational fear of death. Can also be called death anxiety.