#is my source suffering entertaining enough bc i will post more

[evangelistofmurder]

Was it casual when you took the stairs all the way to the mysterious suicide elevator, looked everywhere for me, held my hand and gave me the most romantic gesture by giving me your umbrella?

[m1d-45]

midas we are holding hands /p holy fucking SHIT. so first of all wendigoon is a great source he is incredibly thorough you have it ENTIRELY right. and also yes in the mandela catalogue (SPOILERS FOR ANYONE UNINITIATED) it is confirmed that the alternates replaced not only christianity, but god himself, so do with that what you will!

there so SOOOOOO many routes you can take with this and i am so so normal about all of them i prommy.

like, the alternate not being an inherently malicious entity, just trying to get rid of you in order to continue its own existence? OHHHH BOY. THEY DID NOT LIE THERE TRULY IS NOT ENOUGH ROOM FOR THE BOTH OF YOU.

the absolute guilt reader could feel if they realized that they were the one who brought alternates into teyvat - or even worse, it’s used against them by the alternate!imposter. “they loved you, and all you have brought them is pain and terror. if you hadn’t interfered, they would not be suffering this plague. this is your fault.” alternates using psychological torture my beloved <3

and also just the horror of people praying to a god that is just as helpless as them… me when i lose my FUCKING mind.

AND THEN CREATOR BEING CAST OUT BY THE ALTERNATE… i mean, if fate got a video game company to make a little game based on your creation, who says it couldn’t give a guy on the internet the idea of a world plagued by doppelgängers? maybe the alternates haven’t been able to gain as much power yet, being seen more as a folk tale if they’re acknowledged at all, but with both the creator and several archons missing, there’s a lot of power vacuums that something could just… slide into :)

there’s also the hurt/comfort version where reader leaves the mandela catalogue verse into an alternate-less teyvat and gets to finally chill the fuck out but i enjoy pain - teddy anon, who is now thinking of what other fucked up universes we can mix in here (hiimmarymary anyone? or perhaps gemini home entertainment, or monument mythos? the possibilities are endless)

RED ALERT WE HAVE TEDDY ANON APPROVAL LETS FUCKIN GOOOOOO

i, too, am entirely normal about the mandela catalogue. let’s be normal together.

i knew the first bit abt alternates replacing christianity and honestly.. just switch some names and you have what i was going for with my initial(?) post abt it.

OH in vol. 4 a ‘shepherd’ is mentioned, somebody who acts against the alternates, so like… that could be reader.

and yes yes yes the alternate literally needing faith to survive is so good and so tasty and it’s you against it to fight for the belief of teyvat- you to heal, to restore your status as a god, and it to live, to exist at all, because it was born of faith and breathes religion.

alternates using psychological terror my beloved as well, the concept of the final standoff between alternate!reader and reader centering around “you were where it all started, you brought this upon this place, the earth you swore you loved now tilled by the enemies hands, using a blade of your own making” is SO good honestly

i know i touched on it with the traveller but against reader??? who has personal investment in everything??? aka a million times more ammo??? incredible show stopping never seen before-

“the horror of people praying to a god that is just as helpless as them” hey teddy do you want my account that line is worth like my soul oh my GOD

me when i lose my mind too. people praying to the thing they’re trying to destroy is great, but people praying for guidance that can’t come?? people asking a god with no power for strength, people praying to the one in chains for freedom from evil i- your MIND my guy

and YES the idea of the alternate(s) being almost forced into existence because of the power vacuum left YES YOU GET IT YOU GET IT

also MOMUMENT MYTHOS? TEDDY FORGET HOLDING MY HAND I AM TAKING YOU TO A LOVELY DINNER /p

aisndkndfn AH IN MONDSTATS STORY QUEST VENTI IS HEALED BY THE TREE IN WINDRISE BC ITS TIED TO ANEMO, SO WHAT IF INSTEAD OF HEALING THESE PLACES OF ELEMENTAL ENERGY ARE TAINTING, CORRUPTING- REPLACING?

hiimmarymary is good and great and i love it and love you but that’s more a tale of a personal struggle rather than a worldwide problem so i’m gonna very gently set it aside

gemini home entertainment i don’t know a lot about, sadly, so i can’t say much about it.

back to monument mythos though: 1) your mind is fucking MASSIVE 2) it’s been a while since i’ve brushed up on the lore BUT: lincoln lookers, right?

shrines to the creator, right?

… :)

[therealvinelle]

I agree that Aro definitely is not straight, but if he is gay and not bi, why window shop for a wife? If he wanted a partner for some reason, why not find a male one? It was a different era, yes, but are vampires really homophobic?

So, for this meta, we’ll have to get historical. Before we do, keep in mind that while I know Ancient Greece better than most, having studied it (introductory level classes only, mind), I don’t know it well enough to be any kind of authority on the matter. History, more than any other discipline I can think of, is not respected as an academic field, and people with poor to no understanding of historical hermeneutics will make very bold assumptions that they then have too poor understanding of history to realize are bullshit. This is a disclaimer because I don’t want to join in on the chorus of authoritative-sounding people on the internet with no verifiable credentials who spout things about history that are then taken to be gospel truth by readers because the author made it sound good.

More, I say this because your question is asking me to explain the morality and social norms surrounding a character from 14th century BC Greece. And this man would not, for the record have been Ancient Greek, he would have been Mycenaean Greek. Very quick history lesson: Mycenaean Greece was a flourishing society that suffered a downfall, Greek civilization fell into its very own dark ages, until around 800 BC when Greeks began forming what would become the Ancient Greece we know and love. This in turn means that I can’t very well read up on the marital and sexual norms of Ancient Greece when I’m researching for Aro, because he was five hundred years old already when Ancient Greece became a thing.

And your question concerns cultural history. And for that we’re going to have to look at how we know the things we know about history. How history is studied.

Historians have two kinds of sources: archeological findings and written records. (I’m aware that oral tradition, like the one carried by the Aborigine people, isn’t technically one of these, but to my understanding it’ll be treated to similar analysis as written records, which leaves us with the two types of sources standing strong.) These sources are analyzed, and we apply various theories and models onto them to make sense of the context they were written in. The more sources we have, the more we can refine or eliminate these theories or models.

More, history is an ever evolving field. There are movements and schools of thought that influence how history is written (marxism in history, that is, history as a class struggle, was heavy in the 60′s and I think until the 80′s), which means that how a certain culture will be perceived today is not the way it was perceived a few decades ago, nor will it be perceived the same way a few decades in the future.

You see why I am daunted by you asking me to give you an answer about sexual and marital norms for a guy who lived 3000 years ago, and I hope you’ll understand why I feel this word vomit is necessary.

Now, the danger with Mycenaean Greece is that it’s a society it’s easy to feel we know a lot about, because it was the precursor to Ancient Greece, and we know a lot about the latter. But, first of, the reason why we know as much as we do about the Ancient Greeks is the Romans. The Greeks wrote about their history, their philosophy, their government, and they wrote plays and told stories. However, that was two thousand years ago and their writings would have been lost to the sands of time if the Romans hadn’t idolized and sought to emulate their society. This meant preserving their written records. This tradition was carried on by the Christians, in part because Hellenistic philosophy was incorporated into Christian philosophy. We have neo-platonism to thank for Christian asceticism, the “mind over matter” cornerstone.

What I’m getting at with all of this is that we know the insane amount about Ancient Greece that we do because of some very unique circumstances, and so we can make very sophisticated theories about what the Hellenistic world was like. It’s still detective work, but not Pepe Silvia type of detective work. This is not the case for Mycenaean Greece. We know a comparative lot about Mycenaean Greece, considering how long ago it was, but there is very much we don’t know.

With Mycenaean Greece, we are dealing with a lot more uncertainty. We haven’t deciphered one of their two writing styles, and a lot of the text we do have is very fragmentary. Coming up with detailed societal models for Mycenaean Greece, and for the 14th century BC specifically, is... well I don’t know enough about what this society left behind to know what historians have to work with, but I imagine they have their work cut out.

More, I haven’t studied this at all, which means that any attempt on my end to research this would be stumbling around in the dark.

One example: the Illiad and the Odyssey, while composed around the 8th century BC, were set in the early 12th century BC, which is nearly Aro’s time period. The Illiad depicts a homoerotic relationship between Patroclus and Achilles, and both works depict a lot of matrimonies, so I wish I could use it as a source. However, not only would this time gap alone make these sources questionable, but there’s also the matter of the Illiad and the Odyssey being transmitted orally, from bard to bard. Changes were made over the years. For example, the technology described in the Illiad is from several eras, as the warriors will be using bronze weaponry in one book and then switch to iron in the next. This game of telephone is what happens when a story is transmitted orally from person to person. So, while it’s tempting to use these works as a sort of reference point, the possibility, likelihood even, that the bards made adjustments to keep the old story entertaining for their contemporary audience is strong.

For this reason, I can’t give you any kind of historically correct analysis on what the marital or sexual mores would have been like in Aro’s time. Even if the knowledge is out there, I don’t have it.

But I can say this, spouses have for the longest time been partners. Men and women got married, even in the gay, gay, Ancient Greece, not just to have children but because they complemented each other, they were partners. Men needs wives, and women needs husbands. And a partner was canonically exactly what Aro was looking for, feelings had nothing to do with it:

After Caius and Marcus had found their romantic attachments, Aro decided to find his own, although rather than finding his other half in another vampire Aro decided to create his own instead. Aro had a certain type of woman in mind and he found what he was looking for in Sulpicia. He successfully courted her and she came to fall in love with him.

As for vampires being homophobic, I think that is for another post about what culture they bring with them into their new life. But to be brief I’ll say that while the individual vampire can be homophobic, there can be no homophobia at an institutional level because vampires have no institutions. And it’s the institutional homophobia that gets ya. It’s what the whole fight for gay rights has been about: secure legislation against discrimination and that protects gay people. (The right to marry and protection from employees firing LGBT employees comes to mind as examples of this.)

So, no one could force Aro to marry a woman. 

And I’d go into a rant here about how the prospect of gay marriage, of even identifying as homosexual (the labels homosexual, bisexual, and heterosexual are very new and, to my recollection, were born off of the Western psychiatric discipline as men who slept with other men were diagnosed with homosexuality. I imagine a man from the Antiquity would be confused at the notion that just because he likes to sleep with dudes he shouldn’t get married to a woman), was unthinkable up until very recently, but I just made this obscenely long rant about how I can’t really make these kinds of guesses, so I’m not gonna.

I think being married to a woman and then banging hot dudes who came along suited Aro just fine.

Also, I can’t believe I’m doing this, but - I’m going to encourage history asks. Because this fandom has a bit of a history problem, as a lot of the characters are from different time periods and many feel unsatisfied with the way Meyer handled that. I am by no means a historian, but I know several of the historical periods the characters of Twilight are from well enough to make educated guesses.

So, hit me with your worst.

[mcnahq-blog]

( .. the cutest bean ever omg )

hey guys, i’m jules — a suffering uni student from the weirdest fucking tz — and i’m so excited to be a part of this rp !! i like watching crack vids of bts ( mY BOYS !!!! hmu if you’re kpop trash too so we can sob over wdta pt. 2 ), finding new memes to torture my friends two provinces away with, making my eardrums bleed bc i’m listening to some surfer rock on max volume, and bingewatching the canadian comedy masterpiece known as letterkenny for the umpteenth time. anyways, this is my precious honey girl mona who’s rly just trying to live peacefully ( for a young celeb in hollywood at least ) despite the intensity of her life. here’s some basic — & extensive, sorry lmao — info about her ( TW: abuse kinda ?? , brief hints of depression, insomnia & starvation ) :

( JEON SOMIN & CISFEMALE )— here we have everything you want to know about ( MONA GATLIN/KIM MONA ), the ( MUSICIAN ) that has been stealing everyone’s hearts for ( FIVE YEARS ) years now. her rep keeps pushing for the ( STEADFAST & GREGARIOUS ) persona, but a close source to her says she’s actually ( SYBARITIC & RETICENT ). i read she ( ABANDONED HER CAREER IN KPOP AFTER LONGTIME ABUSE FROM HER MANAGEMENT, CAUSING HER GROUP TO DISBAND ) but whatever it is that you want to believe, one thing is for sure, the ( TWENTY TWO ) year old has the world in her hands. — (( jules && gmt-2:30 && she/her ))

so here’s a brief bio for now

born on april 6, 1995 in incheon, south korea

she was given up by her mother just minutes after her birth, not even given a name as she was separated from her, but knows that her surname was kim

she ended up being adopted within a few days, as her parents had been waiting a while to adopt from this particular agency

was named mona haneul gatlin, after her adoptive grandmother.. well, 2/3 of the name anyway

grew up just outside of seattle, washington with her two dads, an editor at a publishing firm and a cop respectively, and was showered with affection

a ball of sunshine growing up, i mean she was polite and thoughtful af, would give a classmate the cupcake her papa snuck into her lunchbox if they didn’t have enough for lunch

p smart all things considered, but especially loved english and languages while physics could fucking choke ( well.. it could once she was in higher grades anyway )

she always loved to sing, knew that she was good too. especially when her dad gave her a couple of songbird-based nicknames that still make her beam when he calls her that

her dads were aware of the american auditions for korean entertainment companies and since mona grew up learning korean from her auntie — who was her papa’s boss in reality — they figured she would be capable of at least auditioning ( i’m.. so bad at explaining things, i’m sorry lol )

so at thirteen, she went to an audition in san francisco and got in the good graces of a company, so much so that by fourteen, she had moved to seoul and began training

it was.. intense to say the least, especially when she was still p young and had just moved to a different continent

some training exercises felt more like punishments than actual lessons or help, but she shrugged it off as she was determined to make it big, for her parents if not herself

attended an international school alongside several other trainees/idols and honestly felt a bit off about the huge changes in her life, causing her to have some issues with making new friends outside of those she had already made within the agency, which had already been few and far between if she were being honest with herself

at one point, she indulged in underaged drinking alongside a few other trainees because everything became so hard to deal with and it was a means to unwind in some way

but when more positive attention and energy was directed towards her, she stopped for the sake of her future now that it seemed brighter

finally was chosen for a co-ed group at sixteen with her being the maknae and debuted at seventeen

went by kim mona bc she was p much told to hide her english name since it would likely cause some backlash, if not for the fact that she was the daughter of two men so that had to be hidden too

but everyone knew her as MONA, since mononyms are p popular among idols and it felt a bit more genuine than going by her initial surname

they had a lot of success, even having a couple of subunits, some collabs individually here and there and co-hosting variety shows, up until january 2016 when she announced her departure from the group and, subsequently, led the group to disband altogether

she decided that the kpop music industry was a bit too much for the girl that wanted a bit of peace for longer than a week at a time, so she moved onto the western music industry and dragged a couple of her group-mates with her, alongside a guy that they’d crossed paths with while searching for new management

kinda earned a substantial following in their new project since they had quite the fanbase with DefY so they saw sudden success

anyways, to the rumour

mona’s former management company endured a lot of speculation regarding abuse of its artists ( if you’re not familiar with it already, look up the abuse/unfair treatment scandals with smtown and exo, and you’ll have the basis of my direction with this )

when she left the group, most netizens assumed that first and foremost, their contracts had expired and they wished to try something new

however once cavalier put out “trainwreck,” which mona co-wrote, many started reading into some aspects of it as her, and her former members’, history of abuse with her ex-management condensed into an almost four minute song

it also didn’t make sense to people as DefY was at its peak, but when a couple of onstage fainting spells and the hospitalization of one or two of her group-mates for “sudden illnesses” were taken into consideration as well, it made it seem all the more plausible and it became a huge scandal in south korea

honestly.. not gonna tell you if it’s true or not for the time being bc it would prob involve a couple of other muns and speculation is always fun lmao

now her personality/other little things

an actual angel™

who makes rly shitty, impulsive decisions that make her question her sanity lol

not annoyingly nice or cute or w/e though ?? like she’s a rather compassionate and enthusiastic person, but she’s p chill for the most part, unlike the slight shift in persona during her idol days where her positivity was more put on

dumb jokes galore

kinda going through her wild phase now, but also went through one during her trainee and debut days that was more so a means to help her deal with how straining almost 120 hours per week of constant activity was on her teenage self

bad influences hmu

endured depression before debuting, just realized i forgot to add that

she won’t tell you much about her past, v vague about her trainee days especially

the kind of girl that wants a simple life.. but will also splurge on some stunning louboutins

if you ever saw her at an awards show, she’s that person that befriends everyone

but she won’t take shit from anyone just because they’re generally in her good graces

pastries are.. everything to her, you’ll win her over for the most part if you pick her up a chocolate filled croissant or something

speaks korean and a bit of japanese and chinese, super basic though

has been an on-and-off sufferer of insomnia for years now, as well as a couple of vitamin deficiencies, migraines and the effects of a poor diet

so now she’s trying to treat her body like a temple.. by eating as much red meat and veggies, and drinking as much water, as possible, god help the girl

curses quite a bit

has a fear of living alone ?? kind of, she’s used to being glued to the side of her dads/group-mates that the idea of living by herself, although prob more fulfilling for her, is a bit terrifying

also has a fear of cicadas and ordering inside of takeout restaurants lmao

but first fear aside, she doesn’t rly have a dependency on people

has a very staunch standing on many things regarding her career now, finally — and properly — putting herself first for once

also has a problem with prioritizing herself in almost anything

i might add more later ?? for now that’s it tbh

so that’s mona !! if you’d like to plot, message me or like this and i’ll come to you. i’ll post a small connections ooc later on !