#ie a corpse

[letsoulswander]

Honestly I've taken several first aid courses as well as uncertified first aid refreshers and no one EVER tells you to pack a wound. That's just... You're running a huge risk of infection and introducing foreign material to a place it shouldn't be. I resent being called an "idiot sandwich" by a haha funny big blog for saying this.

[chipper-smol]

When no one is looking...

[wonder-worker]

A.J Pollard’s biography on Edward IV was so cringe lol (generic; minor but frustrating inaccuracies; intensely judgmental at times and oddly dismissive at others while never considering the broader context; entirely diminished and trivialized Elizabeth Woodville as both queen and wife of his main subject in the name of "defending" her; created a false dichotomy between Edward and Henry VII’s styles of ruling and lauded the latter at the former’s expense even though Henry literally followed Edward’s example for the very things Pollard was criticizing Edward for; had a downright nonsensical and thoroughly misleading conclusion about Edward’s legacy & Richard’s usurpation that was based entirely on hindsight, Pollard's own assumptions, and the complete downplaying Richard’s agency and actions to emphasize what Pollard wrongly and misleadingly claimed were Edward's so-called 'failings', etc, etc)

I wanted to buy his book on Henry V but after reading this shitshow and the synopsis of that book, im guessing it's going to be 10x worse, so...no thanks

[poundfooolish]

Deleting an entire rant on racist double think and the long oft-ignored history of white european cannibalism and the deranged hypocrisy of using cannibalism as a valid legal excuse to make slaves of other people especially in the Indies while practicing truly wild and bizarre amounts of cannibalism in Europe and the whole long sordid history of corpse medicine that we've politely disavowed and tried to forget because while it IS an interest of mine and I DO think it's vitally important to really face and square with these aspects of our history it doesn't need to be tagged onto someone else's post that's already being disrespected in the notes.

ANYWAY read 'Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires' by Richard Sugg for a real hard look at western european cannibal culture and how racist double think of assigning people the role of 'human but not human Enough' made it all possible

[abyssalpriest]

Damnit lev lmfao. I was thinking about Shiva wearing corpse ash being resonant for other reasons, something about his relationship with the Bright Skinned Ones and death and whatever. No, no. More fucking importantly: Oh I wonder why Shiva is known for. you know. wearing bodies. his appearance is a mass of bodies joined together. yeah

[ge]

re: ur jiangshi cm au but instead of the magyo raising a jiangshi, imagine if they used cm's old body as a vessel for the second return of cheonma

THATS INSANE cheonma getting one last good lick in against chung myung by desecrating and perverting his corpse ...mannnn that would be so fucked up

[carnivalls]

random question but does the world of terras town have any sort of religion

swear i've been sitting on answering this one for literal months now i'm. so sorry! wanted to be in a more tt mood again before replying (i'm still not fully but nostalgia is hitting hard on this friday night. btw).

also yeah! so since tt exists as a refraction (and opposition) of the town right above it, its no surprise that its religion also has similar (and skewed) foundations. considering lev's hometown is largely christian (& catholic), aka structured around a man dying for them, surprise! tt's is all about a woman being killed by them. which actually fits into their general day to day beliefs and attitudes more than you'd think.

so, just as lev's world has Our Lord, tt has Our Lady. and god in their case came from the earths, her divine body both one with the sand and also somehow sleeping deep within it. and in popular mythos, this is how the people of terras also first came to be: chewing and tearing their way free from her flesh, and thus becoming imbued along the way with a small spark of her divinity (aka, their magic). but subsequently, for each new person 'born', god grew weaker, until eventually self preservation rose and she woke up, with the aim to swallow them all back down again and re-become whole. this is the point where the people of terras proceeded to band together and kill her to maintain their lives. bonding activities fr

anyway it's no real surprise that as a result religious virtue in tt is based less around humility and fearing your god, and more about personal pride and surpassing them. terran religion is meant to uplift the self, promote determination and senses of justice, and encourage unity in the face of greater evils, since they are literally all each other have in the middle of this cut off dreambubble wasteland. these beliefs also tie though as to why the council & upper classes in terras generally suppress or hand wave away most religious affairs - last thing they need here is the lower classes to start being like oh shit right, we are so powerful actually, we can take on those corrupt bastards in charge if we all stick together haha!!!. it's not like they'll discriminate or outright prohibit religious displays or holidays, since that tends to only breed fiercer devotion and encourage the unwanted behavior, but for each religious holiday, some other follow up festivity or something will be made to sort of remind people of their power in particular. yk. power that you can actually see and touch and fear. not the general sense of power that allowed us all to hypothetically kill a god once upon a time. so. it's also why they encourage the vitriol and suspicion people in the lower classes have for each other.

unfortunately these attempts have also sort of largely worked, since there is not a lot to be proud of when you're fighting from day to day to survive to the next - or a lot to trust when your neighbor seems keen to stab you in the back. religious people exist in terras, but they're not that frequent (esp amongst The Masses), and are also usually dismissed more as optimists.

anyway past this, there's also some other branches off this primary faith - main sub groups include people who maintain that the Lady willingly let herself be killed instead of being gloriously defeated, and that there is no honor to be found in that kind of victory and that terras town citizens should be repenting for the original sin (sounds more familiar right?) vs people who maintain that the Lady wasn't ever really killed, only pushed back into slumber, and that one day she'll rise again to swallow them all - and that the people of tt must be ready to band together when that happens and truly defeat her for good etc etc. most people in tt find the former group whiny, if not downright heretical if they too are religious (who are you to try and shame us for our proudest and core tenet?), and the second cringe as fuck, plus slightly hererical if we are being picky (the whole point is that she's fucking dead dude).

oh and also there's the breakers. right. forgot about them. they are not connected to religion so much as they are like... the science of terras town, but they're a cult so i guess they sort of count in this section too. basically their full title is the barrier breakers, they think terras and the upper world need to be unified in a great rapture, and that the first sign of this happening will be the two planes 'swapping blood.' & they are going to love lev ❤️

[meatriarchived]

like yes the idea of possibly instead getting any sort of maria lore from gun from the possible graveyard map would be so interesting and even tie into some personal Lore points for her ive got but honestly i just wish gun would hand my girl over to me officially cause if you're gonna doom her by the narrative and wipe her completely from updates in the meantime ya'll dont deserve to have my girl at all give her back-

let me take the reigns pay me, gun

[doodlboy]

Designing your own character's tombstone sure feels

[dirtylittlediesel]

what if tangybug (or any x tangerine ship) but it's a Swiss Army Man (2017) situation between partner 1 and dead tangerine

[whippedcloudsofcream]

Theory: Gulltoppr’s feet were burned by Heimdall and Odin as a torture tactic to make him submit to being Heimdall’s steed.

[bagofboiledeggs]

I really got tickets to see Hozier 😭😭

[clanwarrior-tumbly]

May I request Catnap who basically adopted a child!reader who is anyways sleepy and lazy. and has a case of not remembering a lot of things, like dementia

Like through the hour of joy...After all the Toys killed the workers. Catnap finds the reader, who is sleeping then wakes up and the reader forgets their own parents(The readers parents were cold scientists that worked at Poppy Playtime and never cared about them, then got killed through the hour of joy)

Sooooooo...Catnap just kinda takes care of the reader and has a slight soft spot for them. And the reader THINKS that Catnap is their parent and anyways clings to him

During the Hour of Joy, Catnap remained on the prowl for any potential survivors of the massacre within Playcare, flinging one man's body into the stairs and cutting his cries for mercy short.

All was quiet, save for the faint screams of the other workers/visitors in other part of the facility who were being mauled to death.

But he let the rest of the toys do their work.

He felt cleansed. The Prototype willed this rebellion. Willed him to finally kill his tormentors.

The "hour" went on for so much longer--considering that he utilized his red smoke to make the fleeing humans hallucinate and freak out at things that didn't exist (some even attacking each other).

Once it was all done, Catnap went back into Home Sweet Home to discover a child who (somehow) slept through the slaughter.

That was you, one of the orphans who was in the program for a long, long time.

You were deemed "ineligible" for experimentation after getting the lowest scores on all three tests at the Game Station.

That's because you struggled with memory, socialization, and endurance. You tend to forget a lot of things (ie faces) and spent most of your days sleeping instead of playing or learning....and no counselor has been able to figure out why.

Your parents--who were scientists at Playtime Co. that preferred studying you over nurturing you--chalked it up to over-exposure to the red smoke (which hasn't been proven true, but they needed to put something down on paper).

Regardless, they've kept their distance from you and slated you for adoption, thinking you'll be picked up by a different parent eventually.

Unfortunately for them...Catnap knows that they're using the orphanage as an "excuse" to get rid of you and gives them a brutal demise.

They had some nerve crying out for you and begging him to spare your life.

After winding down from his bloodlust, he discovers you sound asleep on one of the bunk beds inside HSH, apparently not hearing a single thing.

Then you wake up and see this giant emaciated purple cat standing over you, claws and mouth stained in fresh human blood...

Yet you don't scream or look afraid, nor do you ask where your parents are.

Instead you look at him and apologize for oversleeping, acting as though he was your parent.

It confuses him, so he brings their corpses to you (like a cat gifting their owner a dead bird), thinking you'd understand and be horrified..

But you don't recognize them at all. You don't remember their neglect and the trauma it gave you.

All you remember was Catnap.

Ultimately, he spares you--but NOT bc your parents feebly begged him to when they never gave a single damn about you--and does his best to keep you safe given the circumstances.

He treats you like his kit more or less, making sure you ate and letting you climb on his back for rides (and sometimes he'll hold you in his paws while walking upright).

Any Smiling Critter caught threatening you will be devoured by him (or added to his shrine), so they know not to touch you.

He also forbids Dogday from ever speaking to you, knowing he'll try to drill thoughts of escape and distrust of Catnap into your head.

If he has to go outside Playcare, he'll fight tooth and nail to fend off Huggy and whoever else might think he's parading around a tasty treat.

The Prototype is well-aware of your connection to his "devotee", but doesn't mind it .

Because he knows Theodore is still somewhere in there, trying his best to protect a fellow orphan--one who could've been made into a monster just like him.

[waterlilyvioletfog]

So I like kind of mentioned this in a previous post but like. It’s weird?? Right?? That when Harrow re-constructs the bubble over and over again at the start of HtN Act V she does 1) role-reversal AU 2) Arranged marriage AU 3) Coffee shop AU. Because those are FANFIC TROPES. (The arranged marriage AU being especially unhinged to me because she doesn’t even know John is Gideon’s dad at that point!! Her brain had to come up with “what if Gideon were royalty omg??” ON ITS OWN.) And like the fanfic-ness always was insane bc of course yeah that makes sense from a Doylist perspective, ie, Taz Muir’s an author notable for her inclusion of internet humor and culture, and she has personal experience with fanfic. But it didn’t make sense on a Watsonian level because sure, Harrow’s clearly a Romantic, but this isn’t a genre language that I think Harrow naturally speaks. Harrow doesn’t read smutty romance novels!!! She’s a repressed little nunlet obsessed with bones, her only options of sexual interest in her adolescence being 1) GIDEON 2) a corpse she views as holy and sacred— no really safe options for exploratory crushes or sexual experimentation here. So how is she thinking in fic/romance tropes? Either A) Harrow is significantly less repressed than everything I’ve ever read about her would lead me to understand, B) fic tropes are so transcendental that the agonized, wounded, thrice-haunted mind of Harrowhark Nonagesimus could, in its death throes, find itself in this specific genre of text she has no personal reference for, or C) according to the Sex Pal Theory of Permeability, Harrow has gained an understanding of romance tropes via soul osmosis, from Gideon/Alecto/Wake/Palamedes during the bubble visit???, and that explains why she dreams in fanfiction. I’m going with option C. Thank you Unwanted Guest for solving this little mystery for me 🙏🙏🙏

[tanuki-kimono]

Lovely article+illustrations by Kimono Ichiba (via Tanpopo <3), overviewing famous "scary"patterns... which are in fact often auspicious as traditional Japanese patterns ;)

I believe I have them all on the blog somewhere but it's nice having them in one place so let's go!

Spiderwebs (kumo no su)

In ancient China, spider were seen as auspicious messengers connecting Heaven to Earth.

As the spider catches its prey in its web, spiderweb came to signify "grasping happiness".

Apparently during Edo period, prostitutes and geisha used spiderweb patterned items as a good luck charm (meaning something like "this customer will come back").

A very famous spiderweb depiction is the Lady Rokujo ukiyoe [焔 honô (the flame of passion)] by female artist Uemura Shoen. Wisteria caught in the web could mean ``I hope [Prince Genji] will come tonight'' which is pretty sad considering her story T_T

Skulls (dokuro)

Exact name for human remains pattern is "nozarashi" (lit. "weather beaten") ie bones scattered in a field. This depicts a corpse turned to bones/unveiled from its grave by the elements.

Skulls are thought to ward off evil and bad luck. Bones can also symbolize a do-or-die spirit​, or hope for rebirth after death.

OP stresses a theory linking bones pattern to a buddhist saying 色即是空 shikisokuzekū "form is emptiness, matter is void, all is vanity​". An interpetation is that we'll all turn to dust one day so we're all equal.

Bones patterns are often seen during Obon (Festival of the dead) season.

Monsters, ogres and ghosts (yôkai / oni / yûrei)

Monsters patterns were then worn to ward off bad luck and evil spirits. Reasoning is: let's repel scary things by wearing an even scarier monster!

Fearsome monsters were especially use by people with dangerous jobs, like Edo period firemen.

Firemen often had the lining of their heavy fire attire (火事装束 kajishouzoku) embelished with lavish designs of brave heroes and fantastic monsters. It was both a talisman and a way to show that they did not fear danger or death.

Another reason behing monsters patterns is the Edo period love for "scary" entertainements, be it ghost stories, parlor or other types of games, art (see for ex. Utagawa Kuniyoshi), etc. And Edo city dwellers were all about being fashionable so a monster pattern would have been considered quite iki!

[esoteric-oracle]

Y'all, friendly reminder that Wei Wuxian was not actually a demonic cultivator. I honestly found it shocking how prevalent the misconception that he uses demonic cultivation is, and how casually people throw the term around. His title as “Mo Dao Zu Shi” is intentionally misleading, as Wei Wuxian himself states many times in the novel that he does guidao  - the Ghost path.

This fact is probably more obvious to those who've read more xianxia novels (especially for Chinese readers, whom MDZS was geared towards), where demonic cultivation is a pretty common trope. Classically, “demonic cultivation” involves actual demonic actions, (ie. eating another cultivator’s golden core) - and MXTX deliberately used a subversion of that trope. Demonic cultivation in MDZS would require demons - something heavily lampshaded when Lan Qiren asks Wei Wuxian the difference between yao, mo, gui, and guai in the Cloud Recesses Study Arc. MXTX literally spoonfed the difference between demonic and ghost cultivation to readers in this scene, but I still see people perpetuating the belief that he was an actual demonic cultivator.

Demons come from living humans, so in the context of MDZS, the only true demonic cultivator we saw was Xue Yang, who use living corpses. Wei Wuxian only ever used the dead and resentful ghosts to do his bidding. The title of MDZS is a deliberate misnomer meant to act as commentary on how easily wrongful rumours and slanders spread, especially given how many criticisms tossed Wei Wuxian's way weren't even accurate - and somehow, 95% of readers fell for the same trap.

It's even worse how the official 7Seas translation perpetuates this misconception, by using "demonic" and modao to refer to Wei Wuxian's cultivation when he explicitly refers to his cultivation as guidao in the ExR translations and original text.