#colchis memes

[lordelmelloi2]

So I know I said before IDGAF if Waver really wins because I want Sanzang to really make it to the top rounds, but let's sit and think about what this contest is really about: who you think is the Best Caster.

What does that mean?

Does that mean utility in FGO (That can be an aspect)? Does that mean sheer capability in magecraft/spellcasting/magic (That's Definitely an aspect)? Does that mean character favoritism, who you like better (also absolutely an aspect)? Does that mean who is a better mage than the other? Does that mean who is the character who is Best -- which then you have to go down and boil even further as to what qualifies it?

Medea and Waver both have very strong character arcs. Medea is a complicated woman who became evil as a result of the manipulation of others' from her young age; and her desire to completely separate herself from it which lead to the incarnation she mainly embraces in Fate/Stay Night, as the mature, adult Medea, the treacheress, the witch. But deep down inside we know all she truly wants is to live happily, live with a trusted partner, and see her homeland. She is a terribly tragic character in that Aphrodite's manipulation of her caused her to end up with a man who in the end did not truly respect her feelings; and authors have written about how the act of filicide completely separates her from Jason, leaving her remaining not as Jason's wife, or the mother of his children, but as the woman Medea, who triumphantly escapes the shackles of the situation she had been put into by Jason's infidelity to her.

Waver, as I've written about a million times, is a neglected young magus who experiences the mentoring of Iskandar and witnesses the brutality and trauma of a Holy Grail War, surviving, developing a survivor's guilt complex that tied into the whole reason why he wanted to enter in the first place, and then taking the lessons imparted upon him by Iskandar strove to be a better magus and a better person overall, choosing to raise other young magi into respectable, dependable magi, although his own capabilities as a mage remain average. He struggles with his sense of self-worth, but the bonds he has built prove to be his strength in the end.

In terms of sheer strength, Medea is the clear winner. Waver is a terribly average mage, although it could be argued that if Waver's strength lies in his bonds with others, that because Rin had held her own temporarily against Medea, that if he utilized his entire classroom that he would very likely be able to go against her and hold his own and potentially win (I mean we have powerhouses like Flat and Svin there and then we won't even mention Gray...). But the strength, as Waver would say, is not his own, so he won't even mention it or claim it as his own, and would lambast whether or not he truly deserved a win. Waver is not somebody that Medea would consider a threat; unless she knew about the capabilities and spontaneity of his classroom, she could meticulously plan to take out all of them if she knew beforehand -- the problem with Waver's classroom is that there are so many elements of surprise that truly planning like that might be impossible. Waver himself? Dead.

(Btw did you know that Colchis, where Medea is originally from, is actually located on the coast of the Black Sea in what is now Western Georgia?)

If we go into FGO utility, Medea has her strengths, but Waver is a clear winner given literally the sheer capability of support he has as a servant, his skill set up, his stall NP, and the 30% party wide strength boost which is the strongest in the game. It's the reason why when people don't have Waver and the free SSR ticket rolls around there's so many "Choose Waver" memes. Medea can instant charge her NP though and spam the HELL out of that, and can remove all her debuffs -- not just one or two of them, ALL of them -- and self-heal, but is desperately needing an upgrade, lasengle its been years where it is. Source: I literally have a level 90 Medea I used Religiously in the first 4-5 years of playing FGO I Know Medea Gameplay

You could also argue for whoever you think is more compelling. Well -- that's up to personal interpretation, but as much as Waver has driven my life, I did actually spend a lot of time with Medea as well, and I read Euripides' Medea the first time I was hospitalized because I was bored and it really left an impact on me. She is a complex woman. The episode of UBW where she betrays and kills Atram Galliasta in the 5th Holy Grail War had excellent direction, and the scenes of Atram Galliasta wandering the labyrinth illusion she made for him left a deep impact on me.

And speaking of Atram Galliasta, Medea's former Master in the 5th Holy Grail War...

... he is actually connected to Waver, too. In Lord El-Melloi II Case FIles Twin Towers Iselma, Atram Galliasta shows up to try to intervene in a case featuring the Princesses of Gold and Silver. What happened there specifically isn't too relevant to this-- but after that case, Atram continued to bother Waver on what seems to be a weekly basis. To brag, to show off something new, to attempt to bribe him; the Clock Tower had spots for the 5th Holy Grail War and candidates for it, and Atram was the magus who filled it (alongside Bazett).

Waver was not necessarily fond of Atram; and if Waver had known details as to how Atram treated Medea, he would not have condoned it. It doesn't seem like he really condoned Atram's behavior in general. But his death still impacts him -- as Gray puts it in her own words, he was still a person they knew fairly well who died. Atram leaves a recording for Waver that later provides a key hint into unravelling the plans of Dr. Heartless and preventing Dr. Heartless from completing his plan.

I think Medea's actions towards Atram in the 5th Holy Grail War were entirely justified given that we have the information of what he was doing; and I think her pairing with Souichirou Suzuki is wonderful and fulfilling for her. I think, honestly speaking, that both Waver and Medea have similarities in ways of thinking when it boils down to it, although Waver is more rational and Medea can overlook some important details that tend to later bite her in the ass. Both of them had good harmony with who they were contracted with in the war. Both of them are pretty good at what they do, respectively.

So who's better? ... Well, it depends on how you define 'better', and it defines how much you probably enjoyed either one's story. Obviously I am contractually obligated to pull you over and say some shit like "Vote Waver, he's fruity as hell and its pride" but I wanted to take some time to compare and contrast the two of them since honestly they both are characters I've been very fond of in the past.

p.s. if you go "Medea's the better housewife" i mean youre right but Waver is a single mom of 4-7 kids. where's medeas kids? huh? where are medeas kids. ok sorry

Side A, Round 3 (Match 2)

On the left: The daughter of King Aeetes, holder of the Golden Fleece, taught Magecraft by the moon goddess Hecate. Taken from her country by the hero Jason. After a long, aimless journey. She was branded the Witch of Betrayal and left this world. Cold-hearted and cruel, she will do anything to attain her goal. We have Medea

On the right: Well-known as a superior politician and serviceman during the Three Kingdoms era of China. Lord El-Melloi II originally didn't possess the capacity or the history to become a Servant. But due to the extremely special circumstances of a certain Holy Grail War, he was successfully summoned as a vessel for.. Zhuge Liang.. okay lets be real this manifestation is actually just Waver

[colchiste]

If You Were An Otome Character

medea is the guide/support. type: reliable good end: meet in a different world bad end: massacre by traitor

[artemissoteira]

4, 19, 23 for whichever character works best for them!

thanks cactus!! but also oh god lmao I feel the least equipped to answer any of those for any of my characters, given my personal non-relationship to food, love, and beauty. but let's see what we can get out of them! (dnd char ask meme here)

4. what is their comfort food?

Medea will be our touchstone here since Colchis has an actual geographical Earth location, in what is now Georgia. From a brief googling I'm gonna go with something akin to khashi -- Georgian meat soup made with boiled cow or sheep parts. Sheep parts for us, naturally. I think Medea as a child was enamored with the sheep theme of the golden fleece. Plus, she goes on to kill Pelias in a cauldron of soup after convincing his daughters it will give him youth by throwing an old sheep in and having it come out young. When she finds an aesthetic she commits.

Also, at the risk of reading too much into a cultural context gleaned from google, an originally lower-class soup made from leftover cuts of meat feels like a favorite that she might sneak into the kitchens for as a kid, in lieu of fancy royal dinners. I like to picture her having a comfort food nostalgic for a time before being fully embroiled in political ambitions. Maybe we can get her to abdicate royalty once she settles down with Medusa.

Moss eats dirt. And fish.

I don't think Ithren eats. We didn't quite come to a consensus on that but it's hard to imagine them eating anything on purpose.

19. have they ever been in love?

medea my DARLING has been, not that he deserved it. and will be?? medusa come through. I'm still rooting for the medea/medusa/hecuba ot3 but that is a lot of personality to get to gel together with no guarantee of common ground, and I think medea's mild hero worship (pardon the phrase) of hecuba would probably get in the way.

ithren, no, it would never have been relevant. I think best endgame for them will be a very diffuse sense of love for all people and I really hope they reach it, because right now they don't have any concept of love at all lmao. WAIT actually right now their only concept of Love would be overhearing saube and mahety's phone call, where mahety said if saube didn't call back after saving the moon they were going to have their third ever fight. so honestly they're going to do fine as far as love goes. ithren thinks love is when you travel the world to make a teleportation circle to visit your friend. and they're right.

I don't think moss has. moss is too busy.

23. when do they feel the most beautiful?

medea once again coming through as the most normatively having all these experiences. I think she does thrive in public attention, and insofar as that beauty is weaponized, it's still hers and she does it well. right now she wears a gold ballgown with dragon-head pauldrons, linked together with rubies on a gold chain. it's +1 armor and if you attack her in melee while she's wearing it you take 1d6 poison damage. medea feels most beautiful when she is gracefully commanding a room and she knows it.

ithren my love doesn't even know they have a body 90% of the time and the other 10% they have to look down at themselves to confirm that they're drow.

moss... remembers being beautiful, I think. feels like a simpler time. maybe they have been in love, in a middle-school kind of way. moss feels the most free when they're running in the wind along the rooftops, but maybe sometimes a breath of memory catches them: of being shyly beautiful, standing on a dry riverbed somewhere, mud-streaked by choice without the weight of time on their shoulders. a lifetime ago.

[mythos-theos]

Badass Mythical Women and Creatures → Circe

In Greek Mythology, Circe was a sorceress and goddess of magic. The daughter of Helios and of Perse (an Oceanid), Circe was the sister of Perses, Pasiphaë, and Aeetes. She was renowned for her potion-making and herb knowledge, which she used to turn anyone who displeased her into animals. Circe was banished, or willingly left depending on the author, Colchis, where her former husband resided. She moved to Aeaea, and lived with those unlucky enough to be transformed into animals.

It was here that Odysseus and his crew came across Circe, who turned the crew into pigs. Odysseus was immune to Circe’s power, which intrigued Circe enough to turn the crew human and let them stay with her for a year. During that period, Circe bore a son by Odysseus, Telegonos, and warned Odysseus of Scylla, Charybdis, and the Sirens. Later on, Circe purified the souls of the Argonauts after the murder of Apsyrtus.

[stygianking]

❇

MEME FRIDAY: Send a symbol for my muse to respond to your muse…

❇ - stargazing with them.

when your dad’s the greek god of the underworld, it becomes kind of a given that mythology walks amongst the living as far more than stories personified. not that the stories have no merit– quite the opposite, really. they are still lessons to be learned, but most mortals forget that those beings existed long past their tales, whether toiling in the underworld or living out a peaceful life after those days of heroics were over.

and nico knows all of the stories, of course. he has since he was little, although he can’t remember being taught them anymore. he imagines that his parents told him the tales of heroes and monsters of old, and bianca reiterated them to him during that long stretch of time in the lotus hotel & casino. then, of course, it helps to hear those stories from the legends themselves– the dead are always eager to have an ear to whisper into, and nico has always had a hard time turning them away.

“in my world, we had different stars than these. i’m not familiar with these constellations, but some of them are similar. like– that one, see? it’s a little different, but where i come from, we have a similar pattern called the argo after jason and the argonauts.” of course, then, this includes constellations– and although these stars and skies are unfamiliar to nico, it doesn’t stop the nostalgia and homesickness.

“jason once sailed to the distant shores of colchis on his vessel, the argo, to retrieve the golden fleece, the remains of the golden ram chrysomallus. the fleece has miraculous healing properties, able to heal almost anything– it’s saved a lot of lives when used for the right thing.”

to allen, who nico has been reciting his tales of old to, it might simply sound like just that– a tale. but nico stifles a small smile at the thought, pointing to the constellation in question that was so similar to that of home. “of course, that isn’t the argo. i do not know the stories of these stars, but i doubt they are quite as exciting.”

of course, they were just stories… right?

[aliceo-and-co]

// hard part about sending ask memes for me is that my head defaults to “oh this’ll be from colchis/gilgamesh” and i forget the other 15 muses i have, but then i cant remember them to save my life so i have to go look at my muse page and then i get sidetracked making a stupid fuckin post instead of sending the ask-

[colchispod]

We haven't even premiered yet and we already have speculation on Discord

[colchispod]

Dr. Pace listening to Dr. Remnant's audio logs: What do they have...

Dr. Remnant, mid doing something stupid: I HAVE A KNIFE!

Dr. Pace: NO! WHY DO THEY HAVE A KNIFE!!

[colchispod]

Oh I am absolutely doing this meme

This may change as the series goes, who's to say? :3c

Not as serious post, Izze (that's me!) is the one currently handling the tumblr. I'm just being a silly goofy enby and I have NO IDEA how to market a podcast (despite having two other podcasts)

Just wanna make friends! If folks have tips, tricks, or words of advice, or ALSO want to be friends, please message us!

[artemissoteira]

6, 7, 9, 10, 16, 17 for medea ;)

thaaaaanks luka :3 (dnd char ask meme here)

6. what quality do they like the most about themselves?

Self-reliance, I would say. Medea knows she's powerful, and I think she values that a lot for what it gets her. Being able to take care of herself, manipulate situations towards her own ends, command the power owed her station. She's very secure in who she is and knows she will turn heads and be able to control a room. I don't think she's a person who feels a lot of fear or insecurity. Even with the Sphinx when they first met and were feeling things out as two HBICs, she wasn't ever actually threatened. She likes that she can have that certainty and control regardless of the situation.

7. what quality do they like the least about themselves?

Hmmmm. I don't think Medea loves using her power the ways she has to, even though she appreciates what it gets her. Her power comes from manipulation and control and trickery; hardly the most regal of traits, at least to admit out loud. She knows people will see her as the monstrous woman she's accused of being, and I think clings to that image as much for self-flagellation as for armor.

But I think what she likes least about herself right now is that it still rankles, deep down. She portrays a very outward acceptance of being that monster, but it's not actually coming from a place of peace. It's defensive and pessimistic because she doesn't think she has any other choice, after what she's done. She wishes she could embrace it the way she acts like she does.

@agentcalliope and I talked a bit about something similar w/r/t like, myth!Medea being very much the figure of the foreign woman who knew she would never be accepted in Greek society without the protection of being attached to a Greek man, and so had to fight and strategize to arrange a safe place for herself at every turn. She's more or less come to terms with having to do it and she doesn't really care that they hate her, but she does hate that she still wants their approval & wishes she could have the peaceful life she once believed she could.

9. who do they admire? why?

This one's easy given where our campaign went lol, it's Hecuba. Casey and I yelled about this a lot -- the way Hecuba in myth is this epitome of the perfect, loyal wife & queen. And her role as the matriarch is doubly sacred to Medea given her own, uh, shortcomings in that arena. Medea idolizes Hecuba as everything she once thought she could be but now can't (incl. for the reasons above). She was a princess, in Colchis; when she left with Jason it was on the condition that he marry her. She was always going to be a queen, had always angled towards it and planned around it to secure a place for herself, until it was ripped away from her. While she rightly blames Jason for that, it also feels like her fault that she couldn't be enough to prevent him running off with a younger princess. Medea couldn't command the loyalty and dignity Hecuba seems to breathe like air; she has to grasp at the same power by manipulation and sorcery.

Despite the fact that Hecuba feels almost the same, opposite way towards Medea for that very ability to grasp her own power and take control of her fate. I'm obsessed with Casey's galaxy brain in bringing them together like this.

10. who do they hate? why?

she doesn't hate jason, especially now. she's furious, of course, but it's very much a situation of "I sat with my anger long enough until she told me her real name was grief." I do think she's gonna kill him, still, but y'know. she's mostly just sad.

the closer thing to hate she's felt, at least in our game, is for achilles. she really hated him being such a dick, it caught me off guard lmao. I think she got very used to bantering with the sphnix, and also in general with politicans. she's good at verbal sparring. but there's a specific kind of etiquette for how you do that in political circles, and achilles wasn't doing that; he was bitter and hateful towards us, and it kind of slapped her in the face with the worst of these so-called heroes. it was so raw, the rage of achilles. she knows jason wronged her, but I think even now she can't conceptualize him like that. what if jason looks at her that way, now? easier to port all those feelings onto achilles who, to be fair, did kind of deserve it. rest in obscurity, hero.

PLUS he was mean to orthrus, specifically, which is enough to earn death for anyone but the sphinx. and even she's on thin ice.

16. which member of their family are they the most fond of, if any?

I think Killa (her gold dragonet, named diminutively after the Kolkhian dragon as well as for killing) is the only one Medea still considers immediate family at this point. They're her emotional support dragon and I am SO glad Casey let me have a dragonet literally just for fun.

I don't think she feels she has the right to be fond of her children.

Hm, I haven't thought too much about this Medea's Circe before... Circe is family and Medea does love her, but I think that relationship is more akin to the Sphinx -- to be fond with Circe you need to be always aware of how dangerous she is. There's a lot of layers there. I don't think they're threatened by each other, per se, but there's a territoriality that comes with powerful witches of that caliber that Medea is careful to avoid provoking. She invokes "my dear aunt Circe" more as a political namedrop than a genuine familial affection; Circe is more proud of that, anyway. They understand each other in the way of being powerful woman manipulating their way to a place in the world, but I think Circe delights in it more than Medea does, so there's always a little bit of distance there where Medea slips into her more ruthless persona.

And Ariadne! She's fond of Ariadne certainly, immediately extending "cousin" to her, but doesn't really know how to connect with her given their different places in healing. Especially after what Ariadne did for her children -- even just her seeing Medea be that vulnerable was going to change their relationship, but to have intervened in that way... I don't think she knows what to do with it, yet, and certainly not how to bring it up. But there's nothing she wouldn't do for Ariadne, now.

17. when were they the most angry that they’ve ever been?

ohhh babygirl. it's gotta be when she found out about Jason and Glauce, right? I think she knew in an instant that it meant everything had been fucked up for her - Euripides has this whole monologue where she's debating what specifically to do about the children, but there's no choice left for her. everything is ruined. her plans, her sacrifices, her choice in following Jason; the murders committed, the enemies made, the life thrown away in Colchis. all for naught. I think that moment calcified something in her. I think, for all she was shocked and betrayed and furious, she wasn't surprised. of course it would turn out like this; she had been foolish and complacent and naive to think anything good would last for her, even Jason. she was most angry at herself for having believed things would be different, with him. she wouldn't make that mistake again.

[colchispod]

LUCIDITY winning this poll does not surprise me but also I'm concerned that you all want to learn sapience from two useless lesbians