#because characters unlike people are immortal because they are ideas

[hanzajesthanza]

a book with geralt 😃

a book with geralt without ciri 😐

a book with geralt without yennefer 😔

a book with geralt without dandelion 💀

[waytooobsessedwithmcyt]

An au I've been thinking about the lore for for a while but still have no plot so instead of a story you get my ramblings:

(Not mentioned in this post but this au does deal with self harm)

There's two different types of gods, gods confined to one dimension and multidimensional gods. One dimensional gods aren't really important to this, but they involve ESMP s2 Joel, s1 Lizzie and Jimmy, Aeor and Exor, Santa Perla, etc.

The only really important ones in this au are the multi dimensional ones, which there are three types of. Watchers and Listeners like normal, but also a third type that's based on Gem's ESMP s2 character called Walkers. As the name suggests, Walkers can move between worlds to carry out the Watchers will.

There's three gods on the traffic smp, Grian is a rebel Watcher, Martyn is a Listener, and Gem is an escaped Walker. All Walkers are wolf hybrids because they're kind of seen as guard dogs to the Watchers, it's basically a cult to be honest.

Gem and Grian didn't grow up together, but after he ran away, Gem was assigned to keep an eye on him, and that's how she got on Hermitcraft. Grian pretty much took one look at her and said "is anyone going to get her therapy?" When Grian heard she was being put into the life series and that the theme of the series was basically the Watchers giving orders, he saw a chance to help her escape their grasp. The Boogeyman task was specifically made for her so see how evil they were, he didn't count on how good she was at following directions.

Martyn is a Listener, unlike Walkers, Listeners are completely separate from the Watchers. Martyn was sent to keep the life series chaotic for the purposes of making sure it ends and the people aren't stuck in the Watcher's world forever.

I'm honestly obsessed with the whole "existing just to serve other people" thing right now. For her entire immortal life, Gem was taught to completely disregard her own emotions, the idea of even considering herself, much less prioritizing herself is such a foreign concept to her.

I kinda want to rant about how Grian and Gem grew up more because they're so traumatized so if someone could conveniently send me an ask about that I would be forever in your debt /j (I'm going to make the post either way because this is my blog and I get to talk to myself on here)

[damnfandomproblems]

Responding to 3 anons in #5796

"I agree with this tbh. Like adults are the ones making things unsafe for minors in fandom spaces. YOU are the ones who approach minors unprompted. Minors are just minding their own business in fandom, then you all come along and bother everyone."

Predators that are adults are not synonymous with all adults in fandom. It's not the fault of the vast majority of fandom that kids purposefully bust into adult spaces and arbitrarily believe the creeps saying they're "safe" adults. It's the fault of your parents for not reaching you worth a damn and the predator. And yes, kids do fucking barge into adult NSFW spaces. None of the the ones that say they mind their business actually do.

"I agree with this post, cause like... the ones doing the most harassing are adults. I am a minor, and it makes me feel unsafe in fandom spaces. Especially when I see adults drawing nsfw of characters who are MINORS! aging them up does not excuse that gross and creepy behavior. Just stop and give us a space where we don't get pushed into a corner and called annoying. Leave our fandom spaces!"

It's gonna be really funny when you age out of your favorite characters and have a moral dilemma over the fact that you don't stop thirsting over Bakugo or whoever the fuck the minute you're older than him.

And aging up is...how time works. That's like saying no one can view anyone sexually, fictional or real life, because they were once a child. Do you realize how stupid that sounds? If you don't want to be sat at the kids table, learn how to behave rather than screaming at the main table because Aunt Milly told an off color joke and Grandpa Joe has a naked Princess Peach tattooed on his arm.

"I see people getting mad about Fandom Problem #5796, but that kind of is just proving the point? You all act like the minors are the biggest problem in fandom, but you are the ones constantly inserting yourselves and making it about you.

I see adults say things like:

- "Fandom wouldn't exist without adults."

- "Who do you think created fandom? Not minors!"

- "Minors wouldn't have content if it weren't for adults."

All are ignorant of the idea that minors are the foundation to fandom. Fandom would not exist if it wasn't for minors being interested in it and starting groups for people to join. Often times, the best artists and writers in the fandoms are THE MINORS.

Adults make the space uncomfortable by inserting themselves and putting NSFW fics and art of minor characters. Then they get pissy when a minor points out it makes them uncomfortable and go "stop invading our space!"

You are the ones trying to push minors out when we just want to have fun! Just leave us alone!

-A minor"

Minors aren't the biggest problem, no. But by food are they the loudest. You say you just want to have fun but minors have on mass harassed people that were leaving them alone simply because they didn't understand the concept of dead dove don't eat.

And no, you are not, nor have you ever been, the foundation of fandom. It has always been adults, from the very beginning when Sherlock Holmes novels gained an international fan club unlike the world had ever seen to the 1960s housewife Spock/Kirk shipping Trekkies starting conventions, mailing lists, having coalate parties for zines, and laying down the foundation we have today. Adults were the ones that got sued my lunatic writers in the 90s, and they're the ones that, 90% of the time, are buying the services or media for you to consume in the first place.

And I'm sorry, but the best artists and writers in the fandom are never minors. Exceptionally talented minors are exceptional for a reason. The rest of you sit somewhere between "average and has potential" to "would make My Immortal hide its face in secondhand embarassment." Art and writing are skills, and anyone under the age of 16 likely hasn't been writing fiction long enough to run with the heavy hitters. Considering the state of the US education system, this is an even more laughable stance.

Many minors have great potential, but acting like your the best in show when you just made it out the gate is the height of hubris.

Posting as a response to a previous problem.

[marinettesaltprompts]

The Maribat deconstruction got me thinking: am I the only one who thinks Adribat is a more....plausible (??is that the word) concept than Maribat? Like, not even in a romantic sense but a familial platonic sense.

Think about it, he's :

got the tragic backstory & suffered from neglect

canonically been abused waaaaay beyond school bullies

taken for granted by adults (primarily his dad & Master Fu) and by his peers (LB)

dealing with the existential crisis of not being human if we go the sentimonster route.

Look, I get that trauma & suffering should NEVER be a competition but when you think abt it, Adrien's suffered just as much, if not more so than Mari ever did even with Chloe & Lila in the picture. You could argue that some of what she suffers in salt fics (isolation, no support system, emotional suppression, harassment) are ALSO things Adrien goes through bcz while he's a superhero like her, UNlike her, his home life sucks.

So if there's either hero the Bat Fam would empathize with more, it's him. Yes, they can hold him accountable for screw ups but if we go the Good Parent!Bruce route, he can give Adrien the physical & nuanced emotional training he needs to spot red flags & deal with them beyond passivity. The training is harsh but at least he doesn't play favourites, giving Adrien no excuse to slack off & proper motivation to mature. Plus, in the Bat Fam, everyone has clear roles & secrets aside, nobody strings anyone along, offering him a reliable structure to fall back on.

He doesn't come into the Bat Fam expecting to be in charge. Instead, the nitty-grittiness would push him to be more independent & decisive instead of impulsive.

If LB tries to call him out, he could point out how for all she claims to be the 'responsible professional hero', she REacted instead of acted & if real IDs are thrown in the mix, he can call out how she just went with the 'woe is me' route, resenting that everyone didn't jump on her call for a witch hunt when she could've communicated to them privately.

Sorry, this turned out longer & less explicitly mari salt-centric than I thought but I tried to stay objective. I hope you don't mind.

Technically everyone would have their own opinion about whether a Miraculous/Batman crossover could actually work. In my opinion however, I believe that the best bet for a good crossover would be through Adrien more than Marinette, in part because of the reasoning you gave, but also because Adrien would fit the idea of a Batfamily member more thematically than Ladybug ever could. If anything, he's like Catwoman but without the whole stealing bit.

Keep in mind that the whole Maribat AU was created with the goal of creating a salt fic (albiet with a crossover), and the OG creator even took a character that was no way romantical and turned him OOC to make their convoluted idea work, ironically in a method reminding me of the "My Immortal" Harry Potter fanfic. Regardless how it later developed, the original idea was pure salt, albiet one that took off because of everyone's hate boner for any character that wasn't Marinette, with people later trying to justify it for one reason or another. It's an idea that should have never worked in the first place outside of this context. In contrast though, Adribat would actually work because of a genuine commonality connection.

Also I don't mind talking about Adrien on this blog. In my mind, Marinette salt and Adrien sugar are the one and the same on this blog, because the salt of one character is usally sugar of the other due to how these prompts go.

Hell, my entire blog was made in opposition to the more well know Adrien Salt Blog made by another individual, which has both plenty of Adrien salt and LOTS of Marinette sugar, though I would call the latter justification for Marinette's own bad behavior as it never discusses her own issues, it just let's her go off scott free by pinning the blame all on Adrien.

In any case, I like your idea! If you or anyone else want's to share any Adribat prompts that you got, feel free to send them here!

[grassbreads]

What Tai Sui is and Why Everyone Should Read It

So if you follow me, over the past couple weeks, you've probably noticed me obsessively screenshotting and posting about a book called Tai Sui. And now that I've finished it, I'd like to try and convince y'all to give it a chance.

What Is Tai Sui?

Tai Sui is a chinese web novel—a relatively unpopular work by the very popular author Priest (author of Guardian and Sha Po Lang, among others). Unlike a lot of the most popular web novels on tumblr, it's not a danmei. It's in fact rather important to the plot and themes that there is almost entirely no romance, but I promise you, it is absolutely worth it regardless.

What is Tai Sui About?

Tai Sui is a steampunk xianxia cultivation story. For those unfamiliar with xianxia and cultivation, this is a particular genre of Chinese historical fantasy.

The official summary of Tai Sui reads as follows:

“If I had a choice, I would only want to be a little insect in the mundane dust, born in confusion, dying in mediocrity, never seeing the light of day beneath the fog of Jinping City.

Better than taking this wrong road to heaven.”

You may have noticed that this summary is not in fact really a summary. It gives you a glimpse into the story's themes, mood, and destination, but it doesn't exactly tell you what happens in it.

That's because Tai Sui is one of those works that's incredibly hard to summarize. The story is incredibly wide in scope and changes massively over its course, to the point that any summary that encapsulates the whole thing is going to feel like a spoiler. However, I can try my best to add a little detail without giving too much away.

Tai Sui is the story of Xi Ping—an obnoxious, trouble-making rich boy with no interest in cultivation—who gets unwittingly involved in a plot to resurrect the "evil god" Tai Sui. This plot pulls him into the cultivation world against his will and, over time, threatens to rewrite everything he is.

Tai Sui is the end of immortality.

Why Should You Read Tai Sui?

Tai Sui is one of the most compelling stories I have ever read. It is a love letter to the power and promise of the whole world and its many mundane people. It also has some of the best worldbuilding I have ever seen.

Tai Sui is written in omniscient perspective, and though Xi Ping is very much the main character, as the story progresses, we spend more and more time alongside characters that aren't him. By the time the novel ends, his entire continent is at stake, and we the audience know that continent and its troubles inside and out from countless angles. Everyone from the immortal demigods of the cultivation world to the most wretched, miserable paupers is given a grand sense of emphasis.

Tai Sui is a deconstruction of the cultivation genre. It establishes a magic/cultivation system and its history, lets the main character live in that system for a while, and then dives deep into that system's depths. It looks at the cultivation genre, at the idea of people who leave behind their status as mortals for greater things, and asks "How does this really work?" and "Is this how the world should be?"

Tai Sui is the story of countless people who were never supposed to be powerful coming together to make the world a better place. It's well written (and very well translated), exciting, heartbreaking, and incredibly beautiful. It's also funny as hell.

I cannot recommend this story enough.

Warnings/Caveats

As I said before, Tai Sui is a deconstruction of the cultivation genre. If you're unfamiliar with this genre, while the book is certainly readable, you are going to be thrown head first into the deep end with the tropes and terminology at play. It's absolutely worth the learning curve, but it will be kind of a lot. Maybe do some light googling about what a cultivator is before you pick it up. (Or just ask a fan. I think most of us would happily explain anything that would win a new reader).

There are portrayals of people/cultures in Tai Sui that are heavily inspired by minority cultures in real-world China, and some of these portrayals play into pretty harmful stereotypes. It's not SPL "Barbarian" or TGCF Banyue levels of racist, but it's something to be aware of and careful about. I'd really recommend reading from the perspectives of those from the cultures in question (including but not limited to the post I linked) for more about the issues I'm talking about.

Tai Sui's English translation is 930,000 words long. I believe this is a strength, since its length is what allows it such an incredible scope. It is also a fucking daunting commitment, and I acknowledge that.

Finally, while Tai Sui doesn't need too many trigger warnings, it does contain some pretty viscerally upsetting depictions of inequality and mistreatment, as well as a few instances of violence toward children. You can't uplift without first seeing what the people need uplifting from, and hooboy. They need it.

There's also some scenes that are technically rather violent, but the goriness is not presented as gore, if that makes sense. It never feels intensely or overly violent in the way some fantasy novels do.

Links

If all my gushing and propagandizing has convinced you to give it a try, you can find the original Chinese version (where you can buy chapters to support the author) on JJWXC.

The complete English translation is free on the website of E. Danglars, who does a truly incredible job with the translating.

Happy reading :).

[baiwu-jinji]

I highly reccomend reading some of the changes in the revised version, as some arcs became very different there, in particular the Brocade Immortal arc and the Fangxin Guoshi arc, with more context added into LQQ and LW's characters in particular (and also more Hualian moments hehe).

As for QR, the changes on the chapters he first appeared on where, instead of HC making them arrive to QR's lair, LQQ was instead convinced by HC to confront QR... Who was near the royal masouleaum, and in this version anyone considered a "traitor" to Xianle ends up being severely weakened there, and this includes LQQ and XL, which made QR able to chain them, beat XL up and force them to fight eachother basically. Other changes on QR in the revised version include:

-QR working with resentful spirits from Xianle instead of human Xianle rebels and trying to haunt/kill LQQ since the beginning, as well as them killing all of the royals, King included (XL hacked their bodies to pieces to prevent ghost shenanigans from happening and that's where the misconception that he's the culprit began in the revised version). XL later sealed QR for a bit after this too.

-Instead of calming down a little after XL ascended (on XL's request), QR was said to become even worse after that in this version.

-Overall more manic. The idea of his obsession having incestuous undertones probably comes from some lines that were added, like "If you keep looking at me like that, I'll say things I shouldn't.", which are accentuated in the audio drama (which is based off the revised version), but I think your interpretation on this is more likely.

-QR was using a decoy in the masouleaum, but after he was beaten by HC, XL and LQQ, he was too weak, so he convinced a suicidal, alcoholic gambling addict to give him his body... And that man was Guzi's father. Viewing Guzi as a burden at first, he ambushed XL after the lantern festival so he could take care of them.

-No inn scene apparently.

The rest didn't change much as far as I'm concerned. This revised version really makes the whole "XL as QR's subconscious father" subtext more evident to me, from QR constantly calling himself his "little brother", pleading XL to stop HC from beating him in the masouleaum (right after he beat up XL no less), to wanting XL to take care of him and Guzi after he got his new body (and while it may just be my interpretation, I really felt like QR was probably envious of LQQ and his bound with XL too, as explained in a previous ask).

Overall MXTX seemed to make him more unlikable, probably to hammer home the "toxic fan/hater" subtext of his character, but she didn't completely remove his more human elements either, so his character arc is thankfully mostly the same.

Hi! Thank you so much for outlining the changes regarding Qi Rong, and if we all agree that Qi Rong is a stand-in for toxic fans, then it's a little...worrying that MXTX depicts him as even more vicious and unlikable than before, because this would probably mean that her views on toxic fans hasn't softened over the years despite the fact that she has left social media for so long, and the damage and hurt they brought upon her probably still hasn't gone away...

I'm assuming people have heard that MXTX returned to JJWXC yesterday, announcing that she won't be working on the 4th novel she originally planned, but she's not retiring from writing either. In the meantime, TGCF has be unlocked on JJWXC and the revisions to the novel have been updated. I will start reading the revised chapters promptly, and share with you guys any thoughts I have :)

[lovebotomy]

Im thinking about writing post canon merwaine fic. gwaine survived but lost his memory and travels around albion trying to figure out what happened the past years he can't remember. merlin gave arthur farewell and is trying to find a will to keep living (literally bc suicide kinda failed - immortality :///) and while kilgarrah said arthur will return he said no specifics and he lied before so can he trust him? can he trust anything? can he trust himself? what is even the point of arthur rising again? plan albion failed why should the problems of future be his burden too? he has so much blood on his hands along with blood that hasn't been born yet but will be shed because the kingdoms weren't united and anyway people die all the time what's the difference if they die sooner or later they die after all (unlike him) (((he's soooo off the rails))). he doesn't want to see anyone because what's the point what's the point. he isn't close to gwen anymore and can't go back just to confess his failure again. he starts to think about what if he didn't listen to gaius at the start would the results be different? there's nothing for him but then he stumbles across gwaine in a small town and when he finds out he doesn't remember anything hes so happy. at least someone he cares about who isn't burdened by his mistakes, gwaine has a chance to start again and be actually happy but merlin can't get himself to leave him and what if something happened so he sticks around and joins gwaine on his adventures. it's starting to become another arthur situation for him, coddling a man he cares about from anything that could hurt him. but unlike arthur gwaine is perceptive and doesn't let merlin do that. instead he wants to understand him, first because he thinks merlins hot and then because he just doesn't make sense and is soooo messed up but he feels it in his bones it's his duty to make that strange guy happy. then something happens in the town. and while merlin helps gwaine help the people and solve the terrifying mystery (because would he otherwise? maybe? would it change anything?) he slowly learns again what it means to be human and not have every action dictated by forces out of this world. slowly learns again how it feels to recognize right from wrong, how to be a person whose existence isn't dependent on another

it sounds kinda cornyyy when I write it out like that but basically imagine gwaine as character written by t kingfisher and merlin as one by gillian flynn. it would be veeeery psychological and dark in the sense of exploring how merlin would feel after canon with gwaine lightening the mood with his more optimistic perspective.

anyway Would anyone be interested in this bc while I love the idea Im not native english speaker 🤓🤓 and refuse to put in the effort if noone will read it (googling every other fucking word to check if I use it correctly is annoying I have better use for my time). and while I enjoy psychoanalyzing merlin combining it with coherent plot will be tricky (but still fun) (but it would be bigger project so yeah I don't work for free I need like 1 compliment a day)

[dangermousie]

Watching Jin in The Last Immortal made me think of Xiao Yao and Cang Xuan in Lost You Forever. More specifically how they are all adult survivors of childhood abandonment for a cause and how it affects them permanently.

Xianxia is such a high fantasy setting and usually deals with such larger than life situations (either world-saving or romantic.) Characters always die for the world or get doomed for love or whatever. And it’s great fun to watch. A xianxia done right is a rare pleasure.

But I love that two very different dramas this year actually take a different tack of sorts - they go, it’s great you saved the world/died for love/averted calamity etc etc but what happens to those left behind especially when said person is a child?

If you think about it, Xiao Yao, Cang Xuan and Jin are all characters who were abandoned by all those who were supposed to love them as children and it wasn’t because their parents/caretakers were bad people. It’s because none of the adults in their lives ever put the children first - they put saving the country (XY’s mom), saving the world (Jin’s dad), or true love (CX’s mom and Jin’s mom) over the children and the dramas go - well that’s great but it fucks the kids up.

If you are devoted to a cause, whether it’s an idea or a person, it makes you a failure to those not encompassed by that cause.

It doesn’t even have to be a cause that doesn’t take the kid into consideration. Xiao Yao’s father abandoned her out of a desire to protect her. But the fact remains is, she was abandoned and as she puts it in one of the dialogues - all the adults in her life, all the ones who loved her, had reasons for abandoning her but it was still abandonment.

I mean, if you look at Xiao Yao, as a result of her abandonment, she really cannot be in a healthy relationship - she can allow Cang Xuan in because he’s family and she cared for him before her world imploded but even with him I think she doesn’t expect him to be around forever. And as to a romantic relationship - she doesn’t even want a codependent one, because codependency implies a degree of reciprocity. What she wants is someone to depend on her while she is not as involved. As she puts it, she wants a man who would put her first and only, over any cause, or any family or anything. If you think about it, she falls for a man who has been disassembled by torture to a completely basic level and rebuilds his desires and his entire identity around her and he ultimately still fails her test by the end of LYF1.

And there is Cang Xuan. Whose father was killed in battle which is traumatic but then whose mother kills herself over his father’s grave, leaving her small child an orphan in a den of wolves with only “when you are an adult, you will understand.” No surprise - no he does not, and grows as fucked up as XY or more. If XY is willing to open to love even if in a dysfunctional format (and eventually she heals enough that she actually does get a happy ending in terms of love though she loses a lot on the way; the ending is a mixed one in terms of sweetness), CX is not at all - he believes he’s unworthy of love and incapable of receiving it properly. The fact that the sole woman he loves is XY, his cousin, also the one person around him who he knew before his life went to hell, and even with her he doesn’t really try to pursue her for a long long time even as she falls in love with someone else or gets engaged to yet another man - is proof of his damage. By trying to live her grand doomed romance and screw anyone else even her own son, his mother ensured her son will never have a proper love of his own.

And how with The Last Immortal we see the same effects with Jin. TLI is a kinder narrative and the ending of the drama is supposed to be happy for him (unlike the novel apparently) and Jin himself is not as closed off as the cousins in LYF, but he is so very clearly damaged by abandonment - his refusal to seek responsibility or come into his power, his deliberate goal of making his life as meaningless as possible are all the results of his dad liking the world more than his family and his mom liking his dad more than anyone and anything else.

All three of these characters are adults and capable ones at that but the damage lingers and lingers. And I find it so fascinating in a high fantasy setting.

These are narratives of those left behind on a grand heroic quest and that is something you rarely see done.

[thelyinggrapevine]

What is below the cut is a list of some extra headcanons (+ Relationship Dynamic Headcanons) for MDZS.

FOREWARNING! I do not ship bash, nor do I tolerate it. If your opinions on ships and their relating dynamics differ from mine, that's okay! I may have ships of my own that I prefer to be romantic, while you may think the opposite, and vise versa. THAT IS PERFECTLY NORMAL. Just, for the love of the gods, do not bash the ships. They are fictional characters, who cares that much?

It is rather short as of now, but hopefully that will be rectified! if you have any ideas or headcanons of your own that you wish to add, please feel free to say them!

Extra Headcanons

The stronger your cultivation level, the more you are able to do that others may not realize is possible. For Example, if a cultivator’s spiritual power is high enough, they can make their spiritual weapon turn into a tattoo somewhere on their body.

The Sect Leader outfits are like those of the game version, or at least more intricate than how they are perceived in canon.

Cultivators are known to have very long lifespans, long enough to where someone in their 90s would be considered young. The longest a cultivator (who wasn’t immortal) lived was recorded to be 328 years old.

Relationships (Romantic/Platonic)

Wangxian (One-sided(?) → Romantic)

[...]

Xicheng (Platonic → Romantic)

[...]

Zhuiling (Romantic)

[...]

SangCheng (Romantic → Platonic)

They had developed a crush on each other during their time at the Cloud Recesses but only acted on those feelings in a moment of shared grief after Wei Ying’s death. They dated for a few years but ended up ending things when Huaisang became too distant after his brother’s death. They still ended up staying friends, though, and later became sworn brothers.

Being sworn brothers was not intended to be a secret, but they also never said anything about it (but they also didn’t hide it either, people were just either completely blind to it, or thought they started dating again).

Xiyao (Romantic(?) → Enemies(?))

They had feelings for one another, but unlike Sangcheng, they never fully acted on them, as Lan Huan was a sect leader and Meng Yao was (for a little while) only classified as the “son of a prostitute” by others. The way their relationship was shown to others only became closer when Meng Yao was publicly/formerly accepted into the Jin Clan and became Jin Guangyao.

There was a time when they were in a “situationship” of some sort, but it never got any further than that as Jin Guangyao was quick to put an end to anything since he was set to marry Qin Su (his sister 🤢) in the coming months.

During the following years, Lan Huan never completely lost feeling for the other until the events at Guanyin Temple happened and Jin Guangyao’s masterplan was revealed in front of all of them.

Jin Guangyao has a hard time determining his exact feelings for Lan Huan. He can’t entirely say that he was in love with him, but he can admit that he did have feelings for him, even if it was only a small amount and lasted for not even a year

Jin Guangyao knew of Lan Huan’s feelings for him and used them for his benefit.

Zhancheng (Rivals(?) → Familial/Platonic)

While they were younger in the Cloud Recesses, they felt as if they had to compete against each other for the attention of Wei Ying, so in consequence, they didn’t like each other too much.

During the three months that Wei Ying was gone and they went on all of those search missions together for him, they began to get closer. 

When Lan Zhan was out of his (forced) seclusion, he asked Jiang Cheng for help in order to raise a child (Lan Huan bugged him about asking the Sect Leader since they were both single parents and similar in age). He was reluctant about it at first because of the falling out they had during the Burial Siege, but they started to get closer after a few months.

Jiang Cheng knew immediately that “Lan Yuan” was actually Wen Yuan, but he didn’t say anything about it. 

During the times when both Lan Huan and Lan Zhan would be away on official business, Jiang Cheng would be the one to take care of Lan Yuan if the boy couldn’t go with the Twin Jades. While the boy was at Lotus Pier, he was taught to swim and had small playdates with Jin Ling (as well as following Jiang Cheng like a little duckling all around YunmengJiang).

[aleksanderscult]

What do you think are fundamental differences between Aleksander and Kaz? On an even playing field i.e. comparing a young Aleksander to a young Kaz and the very old Aleksander to your interpretation of what a very old Kaz would be like.

I haven't read the SoC duology but from the few things I know about Kaz, the most important difference between them is the matter of selfishness. Aleksander is selfless in comparison to Kaz and has a more important goal than gaining money. He tried to save a group of people and a country from various enemies for hundreds of years while Kaz always is on the look out for the next job that will fill his wallet.

Both of them had a childhood that shaped them to the men that they eventually became. Kaz lost the only family he got while Aleksander was living on the run with his mother (and Baghra was not a pleasant, immortal companion to have). The environment they grew up in formed their future plans but in different ways:

- Kaz grew up among thieves, street magicians and crookers and ever since his brother died he had nothing left to lose. His feud with Pekka Rollins gave him a lifelong grudge that became an essential part of his character.

- Aleksander grew up with his mother travelling from place to place, never safe because of their powers. Just like Kaz, his incident with Annika shaped him to the man we came to know in the trilogy but unlike the former, he decided to act on a larger scale because he was a witness to the Grisha persecution.

So even though both were scarred because of their childhood they decided to take different actions in the future.

Now, as we've seen with Aleksander in his later years, he was still fixed on his goal but he had grown bitter with life and more apathetic in comparison to his younger self. He was a pragmatic and action-oriented person that craved companionship and when he had his chance to have that he behaved with panic at first and then with gestures that showed that he no longer had an idea how to go for it in a normal way.

With Kaz we see the opposite. In the beginning he's distant and cold with his friends, behaving in a business-like manner but as his own story progresses he tries to become more open, especially with Inej. He tries to find his footing in being more empathetic for her sake and I believe in the future he will succeed. He won't be as closed off as he was the first time he was introduced to us. But he has a long way until then (it's the trauma he has to get past you know).

[hetalia-club]

Share the plot sis!

YOU GOT IT!

Here is the Hetalia fighting game I have thought about for nearly a decade now.

I have spent too much time sitting around thinking about what a Hetalia fighting game would be like/ I think a dating sim was a dumb idea for a game and a fighting game would just be better tbh. So the game would play like a typical fighter akin to Mortal Kombat so like a side facing fighting game. They would all have their own skill sets, finishing moves and what not that was heavily influenced by their culture & personalities. Now I don't think it would be as violent as Mortal Kombat (Though I think that would be fun and play into the absurdity that is Hetalia and it is an M rated series and they could get away with it if they wanted. Plus they are all immortal so that would be a good 'yeah he's fine' type thing, you may have gotten cut in half but rub some dirt in it, tis but a scratch.) They would have outfits you could choose from & unlock as you play. Costumes would be based on things like Magical Strike, Cardverse, Gangsta, Historical, Pop Culture references. I also think it would be fun if they could all wear each others clothing. So the outfits were not all character based and you could put let's say Russia in America's Cowboy outfit and that would be fine.

A mechanic I imagine is a Specials Bar

Specials Bar- would be the meter you build up In order to do your special/finishing moves. You would build it up by landing hits and combos. And successfully evading hits and someone else’s special attack by timing it just right.

Fighting styles would be something like this England: Would use magic almost entirely. Would have a wand. Mostly a mid-long range fighter but would have a ‘vanish’ type move you could do to make a quick get away. Arthur and a few others would have a separate bar called a ‘magic meter’ that could be used for separate things like the vanishing in a cloud of smoke or combo breaking. A full magic meter could be used to cancel a special/finishing attack. He would have to charge the magic meter making it difficult to build up but worth it if you could pull it off.

Italy: would have really good evading, a quick dash you would have to time just right to avoid and would have quick high hit count combos. He would be a speed fighter for sure. Would mostly use his fists but would pull a knife out of his boot during combos. Unlike other characters who need to hit other characters to build up their specials bar. Italy’s specials bar would build up very slowly as he’s hit as well.

America- would be a slower character but a really heavy hitter to balance him out. His combos would now be high hits but instead like 2 or 3 really good punches. Would have pistols you could use to stagger and block cancel.

So The game wouldn't be set in an actual war because that would be fucked. But instead it would make up it's own scenario that I think would work really well.

They game would focus as Italy as the starting main character in the story. It would start off as Italy waking up one morning and realizing from watching the news all the other countries are gone and have replaced by doublegangers. He travels around the world freeing the other countries from their captors. Which are, you guessed it the 2p characters. As you free other countries you gain the option to use them in fights instead of Italy, but Italy will still be the main character. The 2ps are not recolors but are instead totally separate characters with their own move sets & finishers. You are trying to solve the mystery of who these people are, why they look like everyone, where they came from and who is in charge of it all. It's reveled that 2p Italy is the ring leader behind the whole thing & they are from an alternate dimension.

so yeah...that's it

[writingforsimps]

Genshin, when they introduced Dottore did not intent to make him so hot. Right??? He has literally experimented on kid- COLLEI WHY IS HE SO-

I am not a simp… I run an account FOR simps. It’s different.

————————————————————————————

Dottore / The Doctor SAGAU headcannons

“The God Y/N? While I have no proof she even exists nor do I belive in her, people all over Tevyat insists she exists. I have however heard rumors of her arrival to Tevyat.”

Dottore doesn’t believe you even exist. He isn’t a playable character nor is he on screen much, he doesn’t have much contact with you so he isn’t that big of a believer.

When he is near the traveler before your arrival he doesn’t believe he feels calmer and more relaxed because of you. He assumes it’s because the traveler is a calming person.

When you ascend to Teyvet however, he is just inching to meet you! Once, of course, he has proof your real.

I hope you knew his intentions are so far from pure. Dottore wants to basically dissect you.

I’d avoid him, but if you don’t… uh good luck?

He’s basically trying to get everything out of you. Wether your open with him or cryptic it doesn’t really matter.

When he does inevitability try and hurt Experiment on you- Yeah, Tevyat as a whole won’t like that.

Your Tevyats god after all! Safe to say Tevyat had the worst weather, trees falling, plants dying storms raging, sun so hot snow melts in Dragonspine, yet weather so cold it snows in Sumerus Deserts…

Dottore would find this interesting! But also annoying, now every time he attempts to go near you lights would go off and it would be as if a storm was in his lab.

So much of his work ruined in the rain.

Eventually, your effect would effect him as well. Sadly, he was a very persistent man who wouldn’t lose sight of his original objective.

“You Are the subject, question and the answer.” he once mused with a smile on his face. “You become more immortal as the days pass…” he sighed out, his smile fading. Mixing something slowly and pouring it into a solution… putting it in a syringe he walked slowly towards you. “Sadly, I can’t have that just yet.”

I believe he’s keep the fact he has you very hidden. You have followers everywhere- looking for you everywhere!

Most of the Harbingers are your followers as well… every archon worships you.

Even after he gets his answers (or just stops but that’s unlikely) he’ll keep you to himself.

So basically you have to run away from Dottore.

“Y/N? Oh we are already acquaintances. I was hoping to catch up with her actually, Any idea of her whereabouts?”

If you know where some of the lines come from… please seek help immediately! And get off that side of YouTube <3 you are loved.

[yumeurl]

thinking about tomarry...and how it makes sense in my brain...maybe the reason i cant get into it much (unless i'm making it myself)is i have a different vision of what i want to see from the ship. not really anyone's fault it's just my brain gmekfmf

i see all fanworks as like, different universes. there are universes more lighthearted or simpler than others, and i'd enjoy any of those choices. but what's important for me personally is the core of every character and relationship. it exists in every universe i like no matter how happy or sad it is. it's basically the essentials, you strip all the details and you'd be left with the base. so honestly any idea is possible, no matter how absurd, it might just take a while to get there if the character's core is against it (like for something simple: a sub tom is entirely plausible to me because liking the feeling of being a sub is separate from tom's personality. he just has to deal with feeling conflicted about it mgmdmf). of course all character cores are pretty much subjective, for me it's just how i interpret the characters so far. like i believe harry's core is "choosing to act kind despite of grave thoughts" which is what ultimately makes him different from tom

for tomarry the core of their relationship for me is equals. i find it hard to be immersed when harry and/or tom get attracted to each other out of something positive. like, harry finding tom handsome; i can see him admitting that in his head, but then gets annoyed af at tom's skewed morals and actions. tom also, being interested at harry immediately or because he finds him handsome; i see him as a character with way too much pride on himself, he has his knights with him, people following him or grovelling at his feet is already expected. and he doesn't seem to care much about physical looks... one scenario i think can be plausible is tom being interested at harry is because harry Avoids him, or always angry towards him. and harry only grows attracted very later on (side note: i would love for harry to meet innocent(until proven guity) tom sighh)

another thing is like, how the relationship progresses along the way. it's the most volatile ship in the throuple(harry/tom/draco) for me, which is kinda funny considering the only one harry calls an archenemy is draco. their personalities just clash too much, and while harry understands Why tom would think like that, he doesn't understand why tom couldn't just keep it inside his head and do the right thing. for the relationship to truly start to settle, they both would have to meet halfway. unlike tmrdm i don't think harry can turn a blind eye against tom's crimes, and he also can't just Not Know when harry values truth. tom on the other hand needs a guarantee in his safety(immortality) as well as make him feel in control and not being told what to do. it'dbe interesting to see how they go over that

and that's just one universe...there's also different scenarios where they have an age gap(voldy), or power imbalance (student-teacher rel), and making a relationship work is just one way to explore a relationship...

all of these are so specific to me and i also mind the t/bs so this specific ship is something i truly just enjoy in the confines of my own head + waif gmmsmf which is both ass and fun because ruminating over ideas is fun but i have very limited time and energy

[decepti-thots]

That post about aileron reminded me of how I think of nautica trying to erase skids from her memory like she just doesn’t know how to cope with death and loss cause she was removed from the wild ass war! It’s a weird beat in the comic but it speaks loudly to me

Ohhh yeah. These two are definitely a couple different perspectives on a theme, as it were.

While I have critiques of Nautica's arc in execution there (it's… got a LOT of flaws and IMO does not stick the landing at all, to put it pretty mildly; hence why I find exRiD overall better at exploring these ideas), I think it's a real shame that unlike so many other arcs in MTMTE/LL with issues or incomplete resolutions or whatever, there doesn't seem to be a lot of interest in taking the core emotional idea and running with it in fandom spaces? It feels like a really toothy emotional hook to latch onto that a lot could be done with as a part of the canon that is definitely a font of massive missed potential and lingering threads. (God, it really kills me ever since it was first pointed out to me how Nautica and Brainstorm's relationship might change because he's watching her do what Chromedome kept doing.) Nautica gets stuck in a kind of Cheerful Generic Girl Best Friend mode in fandom that skips past uhhh. A lot of her actual canon presence, when you really look at it!

It's especially interesting to think about because as a species their feelings about death are very different, right? Which IDW1 does address, and MTMTE specifically mentions this, with Cyclonus talking about how there's one version of the Guiding Hand myth that states Cybertronians are "immortal" because they killed Mortilus. Like. They don't have a lot of context for death as a regular, natural part of life that everyone comes into contact with in the day to day. Caminus isn't just full of civilians in the way you or I might be a civilian during peacetime; if you're a civilian for these folks, death is an abnormality period, a freak accident or whatever at most. (And even then: you're so hard to kill, it can't be common.) Cybertronians in the war are the weird ones for being used to it as a regular occurrence, and for both Aileron and Nautica it's not just that their friends experience traumatic and violent deaths, but that they die at all. It's got to be existentially destabilising in a way so many of the characters on that ship just can't relate to. (Tailgate likely could, but he's uhhhh, he's got other stuff going on at that point, so we will forgive him being too busy, lmao.)

Hell, I mentioned Brainstorm. He's an MTO. MTOs are the first of the currently living generations of their species to grow up with no memory of a society in which people do not regularly die; even once peacetime sets in, we see that they have reached the point in their species' lifespan where death by old age is becoming increasingly common and thus part of their cultural landscape. Those are a lot of Nautica's friends, who maybe want to help but have no easy way to really understand why she's reacting so strongly, you know?

Ohhh I love Nautica so much. Can you tell. Someone hug that poor woman good lord.

[maxwell-grant]

I’m curious, what are your thoughts on Seth from street fighter?

Even post-revamp, still fairly awkward and out of place as a Street Fighter character (even if that is very much the point and always has been), but as a villain, they really won me over, there's a lot of great stuff here. Seth is a self-hating robot in a CEO outfit who poisons the world around them and whose grand plans involve imitating the actual main villain while insisting they are a different unique being (unlike their 26 exact clones), and stealing the creations of everyone else around them, who then dies and gets a sexy cool makeover to become a gruesome aimless murderous ghost, who chases traces of it's creator around to kill him unaware that it's dying with every step it takes and that it's chasing something that isn't there. They went from Frankenstein's Monster play-acting as a cold calculating unfeeling chessmaster who everyone could tell was full of shit, to the Bride of Frankenstein as a barely-held-together dangerous yet tragic monstrosity that everyone reacts to with disgust and pity. They went from what we used to think AI would be, to what AI actually is, and I'd say they were pretty ahead of their time for that alone.

(art by z3dd)

Now, IV Seth was pretty uncontestedly the least popular of the Street Fighter Final Bosses, for fairly similar reasons to Gill: they were seen as too much of a fantasy supervillain, they didn't "fit" the series, they were too weird and awkward and out-there, and where as Gill at least got a pass because of his presentation and style and sheer contrast with Bison (although that "pass" only happened because people turned around on 3rd Strike), Dollar Store Dr.Manhattan was just lesser than Gill and Bison in every way and thus was a dissappointing final boss, an out-of-place comic book supervillain who didn't justify their existence.

Granted, the series actually had way more of a precedent for Seth than it ever did for Gill, given the presence of prior cyborgs and shapeshifters (the Shadaloo cyborgs from the animated movie that Seth was directly based from, Twelve and Necro) plus Gill, and the door for comic book supervillains was blasted open in the first place with Bison (and all the fighting game bosses that descended from him). But still, Bison's thing was that he was one-in-a-million, that he broke the rules as an dishonorable intrusion, that if you reached high enough to topple the greatest fighter (Sagat) you could fight the greatest fighter's boss, a man so powerful rules and structures could not apply to him and only your fists stood between him and global domination. Since obviously you can't take a step back and you can't do the same trick twice, that formula had to be tweaked for Gill and Seth: Gill was presented as someone above even Bison on the food chain and scope, a distant immortal bearing divine judgementt on trespassers, where as Seth was defined by their role irrevocably beneath Bison, and the walking inferiority complex that ensues.

They are a Bison project, one of 26 exactly like them (which means canonically most of the fighters got to defeat "a" Seth, which really does not make them very impressive), growing from Bison's leftovers to lead a subsidiary of Bison's organization, continuing Bison's plans, with their grand plot being just an imitation of Bison's plan to control Ryu's power, and generally acting and speaking and doing things exactly like Bison while uselessly whining that they are NOT Bison and that they will succeed where Bison failed, while the narrative makes no secret of the fact that Bison is still alive, still pulling the strings, and that he was perfectly fine until Seth started getting a little too big boy pants for his liking, and now Bison's gonna put his homegrown Pinocchio in the shredder with little to no difficulty and take the reigns as Final Boss again. Which, granted, did do it's job in building Bison back-up again, but didn't do a thing to negate the idea that Seth was a superfluous, inferior rip-off, given that textually, this is how they were presented as.

Even the characters didn't seem to take them very seriously, certainly not as seriously as Bison, and that was BEFORE the breakout rock star of the IV series, Juri, debuted to ensure that Seth wouldn't even be the most popular new villain. It is the least surprising thing in the world that Seth would achieve much greater popularity, in part, by being redesigned to be more like Juri. And part of what made Juri appealing was the fact that she was a conniving, cool, unique loose cannon villain ready to make Seth eat shit over thinking that they could control her, they became the big-headed authority figure for our punk bad girl to kick like a pinata. Unlike Vega and Balrog, who only talked a big game, Juri actually got to kick her dipshit supervillain boss to the curb, and we all loved her for it.

Seth's major saving graces were their gameplay, which made them very popular competitively, plenty of aspects of their design, and the fact that all of the above worked to make Seth a character who, while not terribly compelling in their own right, did a lot to make other characters more interesting, like Abel, who was designed to be a good counterpart to Seth and not remotely interesting besides (although his stint as Guile's manchild partner in SFvsT has it's moments), or like Juri and Bison, giving them an enemy they could actually defeat to gain street cred. Frequently you need villains that only exist to let other villains be cooler by comparison or retain their dignity or put one over. Sometimes you need a Cluemaster in place of your Riddler, a Mac Gargan to make all the other Sinister Six guys omlook better by comparison, a Zant to fill in screentime for Ganondorf or a Hobgoblin instead of a Green Goblin. You need your in-betweeners even if, and sometimes especially if, they will never be anyone's favorite character. Which is a harsh thing to say about Seth, but for a while they definitely didn't seem like anyone's favorite baddie, but instead someone who made their favorite baddies look way better by comparison.

And Seth worked in this regard especially because their design was built on the idea of them being unnatural, contemptible and out-of-place. I actually think Seth's original design does work, and has been vindicated over time. Seth is a cybernetic intelligence made by scientists to consume and imitate all the brilliant techniques that the World Warriors spent years/decades perfecting, a twisted mockery of their beliefs and achievements. They look like a living yin-yang and conducts themselves posing like a Shinto god, but there is no spirituality or soul to anything they do. They are a grotesque, soulless husk that can only imitate, can only cruelly replicate the evil of their creator and not even do a terribly impressive job at it, and all of their attempts to convince others they are in any way different or unique ring hollow. They are one in many many Bison back-up bodies even among the playable cast, and all of their achievements are meaningless, either already belonging to Bison or stolen and repurposed by Bison and others.

There was plenty about Seth that already worked and was just held back by a not-particularly impressive design or presentation. The grand trick that SFV pulled was basically giving them a new one, and taking everything about Seth that used to be implied and subtextual, and basically making it textual, making it a scream they can only repeat ad nauseum, and in the process making one of the most tragic SF characters as well as one of the coolest.

Now, yes, you could argue that SFV Seth kinda missed the point in a big way by actually giving Seth a distinct and interesting design best described with the "not to be a lesbian but oh god oh fuck jesus christ" meme, when the character being soulless and unoriginal was important to their make-up. But it was never a terribly interesting idea (already done by the likes of Twelve or the Cycloids), certainly not for a fighting game character let alone a Final Boss with such massive standards to live up to, and shades of it still impart in the new design in a far more delightfully twisted way. It's Seth, except they are Juri now. They've been remade in the image of their true enemy, their hateful minion that ruined their plans, led Bison to them, killed and broke and stole them to be remade using a discarded Doll body from Bison's scrap pile, and the process has revived Seth into a pitiable broken record of itself.

The new design greatly emphasizes the corrupted Shinto / yin-yang elements of before, adding splashes of color and powerful glowing lines to the design that make it so that, while they looks less cadaverous, they look much more the part of a corrupted imitation of a deity, so that despite being downgraded from boss status they actually look much more like something you'd face as a Final Boss, something that could stand next to the other Final Bosses. And that glow-up extends to their moveset: Instead of pasting together improvised and half-hearted recreations of iconic special moves, Seth now directly steals and perfectly replicates the skills from whoever they're fighting. Seth conducts themselves with greater power and swagger this time around, with tons of new animations lifted from powerful past Capcom villains like Demitri or the Heritage to the Future take on DIO, and it works. Because even now, Seth can only imitate greatness from others. Seth has perfectly captured advancements in A.I tech because they can learn, grow, and even imitate to near-perfection, but they cannot meaningfully improve, and they are dragged down by incohence, chaos, errors and glitches in programming. In short, the fact that they are an artificial intelligence to begin with.

That's a thing about A.I and robots in general: Sci-fi has spent over a century anthropomorphizing robots and artificial intelligence characters to empathize with and make stories out of, create lovable stock fantasy characters that our culture comes back to again and again, but now that they are a real thing, and they are horrible godless abominations often used to actively make the world worse (even if it's hard to ascribe fault to something that isn't sentient enough to be malicious), we can't really deal with that. It's a cognitive dissonance that sci-fi doesn't look like it's going to catch up for a while now, if it ever will. We still like robots and robot stories and characters too dang much to know how to live with them. We still cry over Pluto, it's unavoidable.

And crying may be a strong term, but SFV actually seriously invites us to feel sorry for the dang thing, and the great final trick SFV pulled was breaking Seth under the weight of being Seth. Under the weight of being lesser, of not being real, of being an artificial creation made in an assembly line and not even the best of it's kind, of being not a terribly popular creation, of being a victim of characters that will get away with what they've done to them because nobody's gonna stand up for Seth, of being a Bison imitation made to house Bison and do Bison's bidding in the meanwhile, and thrown in the trash despite performing exactly as it was supposed to. Seth has faults of personality that make them more than a machine, and less than a person, and if the cast before generally despised them but not to the extent they despised Bison, now most characters outright pity them, as a thing living past expiration date that shouldn't be alive at all.

And because of all of this, in a way, Seth has attained a form of uniqueness. Even among the other villains and tragic characters of Street Fighter, Seth stands unique as a truly tragic, doomed villain, not even really a villain anymore so much as an obtuse, sad disaster. They are maybe Bison's greatest victim now, because even the Dolls (sans Marz) are all getting moderately happy endings, even Cammy and Abel and the Neo Shadaloo goobers got to make new lives for themselves, even Nash got to die by their terms and make his sacrifice count. Seth had nothing besides this. Seth was created for, born into, lived by, and died as an extension of Bison's evil, a tiny little bump in Shadaloo history, a piece of junk that Juri used and broke and tossed aside to resume her miserable life afterwards, and all their revival did was prolong the horror. Just one among endless horrors JP leaves behind when he's through with them.

We have yet to know what became of them after SFV, because many stories from SFV have been dropped or left incomplete in 6 (and many probably for the better), but even though Seth really was a villain and a horrible enemy to all of humanity, you kinda wind up feeling sorry enough for them to almost wish that their SFV ending happened, where they destroy Bison and ascend over their other selves, and still the question of whether they could ever be at peace lingers. This ending just fascinates me to no end, and it makes me think of the quotes that Gouken had to say to them that alone stood as an indication that Seth could be more than they appeared and insisted on being:

"Until you acknowledge the soul within, you cannot use your power for good."

"You seek individuality and identity, but you will not find it this way."

(JP win quote) "Look, you don't have to use your powers to express who you are."

Until they appear again, that this is the note that Seth as a character goes out on might even imply that this was either their true goal all along, or that Seth has genuinely progressed as a person enough to want something new. That they are now able to seek or at least aspire for peace of mind, where as before there was only a desire for conquest and power, to show the world that Bison was a ghost and that they were the king, the ruler, the greatest fighter of all. Seth constantly expressed disgust and hatred at their other variants, killing them and flying into a murderous rage at being referred to by their number, even expressing in IV a desire to "be the sole survivor of this world" presumably with everything else as data within themselves. Here, they appear before the other Seths in a pose of ascended godhood, even seemingly benevolent, like they're ready to bring their siblings along.

The spiritual elements of their design no longer appear as a corrupt imitation, but an indicator of genuine spirituality. That Gouken was right, that there really was a soul in Seth waiting to be acknowledged, that the exorcism of the great evil that once defined them has allowed at last a pursuit of individuality and identity and self-expression, to reconcile their hatred of themselves (which manifested as a hatred of the other numbered Seths). It's such a fascinating development that it almost, almost makes me wish Street Fighter would dip it's toes a little into multiverse territory, much as I hate the superhero-ification of the series in V. I have thoughts on how MK1 handled this and very mixed ones at that, but the canonization of "every character ending from past arcade modes can have happened in separate universes and we can have it cross over whenever we feel like it" is an idea I do like, if nothing else this ascended development for Seth just seems like too potent an idea to never touch on again.

I used to not like Seth, really. They used to be one of my less favorite characters. Now I'd call them one of my favorites, and I'm just feeling horribly sorry for them. I need to know what became of them. Whether they'll still come back for one last torturous round of existence, whether they are heading for some other exciting new development, or whether the very next second after the end of their V story, they simply ended with one of their victory quotes:

"A SERIOUS ERROR HAS OCCURRED."

"A SERIOUS ERROR HAS OCCURRED."

"A SERIOUS ERROR HAS OCCURRED."

"A SERIOUS ERROR HAS OCCURRED."

[mask131]

Greek mythology talk... About the incompatibility of modern sensibilities with Ancient Greek mentality.

Don't worry no rape or sexual talk. We'll do something more joyful... DEATH!

I want to talk about Thanatos, and about how the treatment of this personification in modern media reflects a fundamental fracture between modern mindset (well... modern American mindset let's be honest) and Greek mythology.

There has been a recent streak of interpretations of Thanatos as a fair deity, in all the senses of the term. Beautiful, needed, just, benevolent or neutral. And that Thanatos would be interpreted in such a way is very logical and... yeah kind of needed. We are currently living (or we have lived) a strong cultural shift when it comes to Death - where fiction has done its best efforts to destroy our fear of death, make us accept or embrace it in various way. We have gone through a lot of Death personifications that are all about being respectable or charming or funny or honorable entities: Pratchett's Reaper, Gaiman's Death of the Endless, Guillermo del Toro's Angel of Death, etc, etc... We are living in a culture that works to make Death a neutral principle, a force of nature beyond morality, or a benevolent and pleasant though grim and sad thing. Again, it is something we do need after millenia of us mortals being taught to fear and escape our own mortality, and this same fear or disgust of death causing us to do all sort of horrible things.

That being said... While it makes sense that such a way of thinking would be reverberated onto the Greek Thanatos, it poses a big problem. Thanatos was never meant to be a benevolent, fair or even just entity. That's actually a counter-interpretation of the Ancient character. And that's what I mean by how modern mindset has a hard time grasping the ideologies and philosophies behind the Greek myths.

Ancient Greek society was one of the main reasons behind Europe's fear of death. It is one of the roots of the "death is evil" mindset. And not accepting this is not just denying a reality, but also completely misreading the ancient myths. The Greeks feared death - and as such Thanatos is considered and called a "dreaded" deity, because all the gods associated with mortality were supposed to be terrifying. The same thing goes with Hades: he who must not be named, he who must not be seen. And unlike Thanatos Hades is actually a fair and honorable god - but still he was feared and avoided precisely because he is associated with and rules over death, which itself is a negative principle. Talk about death, you attract death (out of a superstitious mindset) and the Greeks would avoid that at all costs - for their main goal and ideal in life was to live. Remember: eternal life, immortality, was the purest and most perfect form of existence ever (hence why the gods are superiors to mortals). Death was never seen as pleasant or seducing in any way.

More than that: Death was filth. It is something typical of many Ancient societies, but the Greeks had it going VERY strongly. When someone died, it soiled the place and the people. Hence why there was a need for purification. Hence why murderers were more likely to be cursed and banished than rapists for example. Death was filth, a disease, a stain, something foul and vile, which needed to be cleansed. And the mere idea of the dead returning to the world of the living was one of the worst case scenarios ever - which is why Hades' threat in the Persephone myth was taken so seriously. It would not just be an "upset of the balance", it would be the end of humanity because the mere SIGHT of the dead returned would cause the living to go crazy of fright or die of terror or be broken out of shere repulsion. And it would soil the living world forever...

All of that to say: Thanatos, the embodiment of death, was not in Greek mentalities a good guy. There has been a long talk about "Let's un-demonize Hades", I myself participated in this talk, and I couldn't agree more. We cannot ignore that Hades was a feared, dreaded god that was avoided and recognized as a sinister force - but he was not evil, not a bad guy, not a Greek equivalent of the devil. He was just a neutral force of nature, someone performing a dirty but needed task, and someone who we feared because of what he could unleash and thanked for not unleashing this. He was feared and avoided, but the same way a prison warden or an executioner tends to be treated - we don't want to hang out with those people, but when they do their job by the law we thank them for being here. (Well for the executioner, it's debated depending on if you are for or against death penalty but that's another story)

Thanatos on the other hand... Its bad. Thanatos is not fair. Thanatos is not neutral. Thanatos is not just "acting by the law". Thanatos is a deity that is dreaded by all living beings and that terrifies them - and for a good measure! Thanatos is supposed to be all the darkness and horror and ugliness and violence and filfth of death combined into one person. It is Hades that maintains the order and the balance: not Thanatos. In several texts we have Thanatos described as an enemy of humankind, as an entity who delights in ending lives, as a god who enjoys more his job when he gets to kill young people, as an entity who sees his job as a privilege and will never let a mortal escape him without a good fight. Why does Zeus, when he wants to offer a peaceful and glorious end to his son Sarpedon, seds both Hypnos and Thanatos to him, not just Thanatos? Because, the text precises it as such - Hypnos is the one who is "painless". Aka, Thanatos is the pain. Death is a suffering in the Ancient Greek mindset, and this suffering is named Thanatos. Without Hypnos by his side to soothe his evil and veil his brutality, Thanatos only brings horrible diseases and brutal murders and vicious disasters. To die peacefully "in one's sleep"... That's Hypnos, not Thanatos.

And it isn't just Thanatos - he is affiliated with the Keres. And everybody forgets the poor Keres... Thanatos is sometimes described as drinking the blood of funeral sacrifices, making him look like a gruesome vampires. This is because the idea of a death as a bloodthirsty-vampire was typical of Ancient Greece - and can be found back within the Keres. These female spirits were in charge of death on battlefields and during wars - they were the female counterparts of Thanatos, the embodiment of brutal murders and death by weapons and manslaughter. And they were depicted as Erynies-like entities, a mix of vampires, frightening ghosts and corpse-eating birds, with an horrifying appearance, who terrified all those that saw them, and who spent their time ripping away bodies and drinking the blood of the living.

All of that to say, the embodiments of Death in Ancient Greece were deeply unpleasant. It was horror entities, and the "rehabiliation" of Thanatos does not answer the same questions and needs as the rehabiliation of Hades in modern perception of Greek mythology.

I want to insist that I do understand, and I accept and I can agree with a reading of Thanatos as a beautiful, fair, just or benevolent entity. Either as a subversion of Ancient Greek mythology (and it is not because we need to be better taught about the source material that we can't do subversions fit to modern days), either as a simple continuation of our own modern culture. Because we do have an entire aesthetic of the "beautiful Angel of Death" (or the "beautiful Lady Death"), AND we do live in a world where the arts and the philosophies rely on a multi-continental idea that Eros and Thanatos are a couple, a duo, twins. As such, making Thanatos a "dark Eros" is defendable, logical, expected.

But the problem still stays that the idea of Eros and Thanatos as a couple could NOT have existed within Ancient Greece, and this is something that needs to be understood. Eros and Thanatos had nothing to do in Ancient Greece. Aphrodite did not belong to the Underworld. The twins were Hypnos and Thanatos, sons of Nyx the Night. As such, if you want to do something truly faithful to the Ancient Greek mythology, you will need to do Thanatos as a petty, stubborn, evil, wicked, ugly, terrifying, horrifying thing - on various degrees and nuances.

It does not mean one needs to stick to this idea, of course, people can do anything they want in the end cause if we were bound by millenia-old tales when it comes to modern retellings we wouldn't have anything new or creative today... However I do strongly believe that people should be aware and recognize that having a "fair Thanatos" is in itself a subversion and reinvention of the Ancient Greek myths, and is not at all faithful to the Ancient Greek worldview in any way. "Fair Thanatos" can exist, and has existed for a very long time... But to pass it off as the "real" or "original" Thanatos of the Ancient Greeks is a misinformation and a lie. The Ancient Greeks hated and feared death. They thought it was filthy and ugly and disgusting and repulsive. And it might be hard to accept for us today, since we know that death is just a neutral thing and unescapable part of the cycle of life and how the world works... But that was the Greek mindset and the Greek worldview essential to understing Greek mythology - the same way we have to accept that the Greeks believed all waters came from the Ocean which was not an ocean but a gigantic river surrounding the world, or that we have to accept that the Greeks believed Black people were black because they lived in lands devoid of night and thus had their skin burned by the endless sun.

It clashes with our modern knowledge and sensibilities and morals, but if we do not know and inform ourselves about these fact that were basics and fundamentals for Ancient Greek poetry and culture, we will completely misread the Ancient Greek myths.