#modernity vs tradition

[insightfultake]

The Paradox of Public Space

It was a blistering afternoon in Varanasi, the kind of heat that made the air shimmer in waves and the asphalt buckle beneath the weight of the sun. Vikram stepped off the crowded bus, wiped his brow with the sleeve of his shirt, and set out toward the Ganges, hoping for a breath of cool air by the riverbanks. The streets were thick with the scent of curry, incense, and the occasional cloud of diesel exhaust.

As he walked, he couldn’t help but notice the familiar scene: a group of men casually urinating against a wall near the market. They didn’t look up, didn’t seem to care. No one bothered them. A few women avoided the alley with a polite turn of their heads, but most people pretended not to see. The men’s backs were to the world, their faces turned toward an invisible horizon, lost in their own private moment of release....read more

[isa-ah]

he’s a tired kitsune who spends his time trying to mediate between people and spirits and wandering around cities cleaning up messes he’s framed in by his rival

[centuryberry]

What are some of their attempts to convince Wukong? What Modern dating methods do they try (and occasionally butcher)? Old ones that don't quite translate (or Wukong pulls Amnesia)?

I sense shenanigans.

(And also have been struck by the image of Wukong opening a door to find one of the trio laying in bed with a "F*ck me" sign above them.)

(I was then subsequently struck by the image of Wukong responding, "Uhhhhh, I can't read? *closes door*"

When RinRin, Macaque, and Shanzha started their attempts in luring their husband to bed, they were completely blatant…in traditional standards.

Romantic gestures in that era were subtle. A simple exchanging of gifts would be a proclamation of eternal love. And there are so many secret languages: the language of flowers, the language of fans, etc.

(Warning: Slightly suggestive)

RinRin preferred slipping in sly, subtle innuendos in conversations and teasing Wukong like she used to do when they were young. She also likes using food as a tool to be touchy and suggestive. (Those poor bananas.)

Macaque would drag Wukong out to walks in the garden and anywhere else pretty. He would cling onto his arm during walks while wearing all the pretty hairpins and jade pendants that OG!Wukong had gifted him throughout the years of their marriage.

Unlike the other two, Shanzha doesn’t have any history with Wukong and is in an unstable position, so she’d be less blatant. She’d show off her skills in archery and would spar with him to encourage contact. She’d also wear clothing that would turn slightly sheer with enough sweat during these sessions.

When all of this didn’t work, the three of them would outright ask Wukong to come visit their rooms.

All of this, of course, flew over Wukong’s modern head. The first time he accepted, he thought it was a sleepover. Shanzha and RinRin were too shocked to correct him when he visited them for the night (he tried to recreate scrabble lol) but Macaque doubled down and scared Wukong off when he made it clear what he invited him into his room for.

It was a little heartbreaking for Macaque but that sting was quickly eased when Wukong came to him with flowers the next morning and babbled about his amnesia. He played dumb and would continue to play dumb.

Unfortunately, upon every “failure,” the three became more and more bold. (Thus, the hilarious scenario you painted in your ask. They had to spell it out for him at that point.)

When it was revealed that Wukong came from another world and time, everything clicked. They shifted gears. Instead of approaching all of this like spouses, they would then approach this as suitors. This would be a courtship.

After wiggling as much info about modern day courtship out of Yue, they took a try at this “dating” thing. It was…fun. There was a bit of flower giving and hand holding. They would watch plays together with snacks (a try at a movie date). They would try to make homemade food with varying results (RinRin and Macaque burnt their offerings). They snuck out of the palace in disguises once to have a casual date without the pressures of court.

(Though they did bungle up the “Netflix and Chill” idea and flustered the hell out of Wukong lmao. Yue only added that one as a joke.)

Wukong would see all this effort and be so, so flustered and yet so, so happy. He’s a bit of a romantic so he’s a bit of a sap about these things. Even if the results aren’t perfect, he appreciates the effort and he tries to reciprocate traditionally (though the three are beyond subtleties at this point and prefer the modern straightforwardness.)

[vv-ispy]

Teyvat pop culture references

[skitskatdacat63]

Tradition vs Modernity vs Comradery

+ context & lore:

In the first drawing, Fernando is wearing a capote de paseo, which is what bullfighters wear before the match begins, as seen below:

In the second, Seb is shouting the very familiar "Olé" which is shouted by the crowd to praise the matador. He's a little brat, so of course he's yelling it for himself, but he did get many 💐

The third(which was a random sketch I had that I didn't think I'd finish tonight, so ignore if its messy) has very important context to me. Before going to the final act and killing the bull, matadors dedicate their montera(hat)(and symbolically: their kill) to a a specific person in the audience(or just the public as a whole.) Seb and Fernando are finally in the same color! Seb is bowing!!! And Fernando is honoring Seb!!!! Also ignore that I drew Seb's post-retirement hair. Though, maybe this drawing is supposed to represent Fernando making a dedication to his now-gone rival 😔(Seb: stop telling people im dead!)

Now, some more lore :D

So I talked about this in my last matador post but I'll expand more. I think it's very funny to characterize Fernando in this au as this fun-hating traditionalist. Because you have to understand; he's only this way when it comes to Seb. Because you absolutely KNOW he was doing silly, unserious shit back when he was younger. But absolutely god forbid Seb do anything silly.

It's very ironic because there literally is a part in the third act of a bull fight where it's basically encouraged to be a bit silly. This is a tad morbid, but basically right before they deliver the killing blow, some show their mastery over the bull by doing some superfluous action(ex. kissing the bull, kneeling in front of the bull.) There's some guy who literally would lean on the bull and mime taking a call. But anyways, Seb would def do this. I've not been able to draw it exactly how I want, but he would bend down and do his little bull horn symbol and mime charging at the bull. (Fernando, trying to make up reasons to hate Seb: oh my god, look at this blatant disrespect, look how he is disrespecting the bull, I cannot believe how rude this boy is!)

Also there's something to be said about how the matador shows mastery over the bull by kissing it or bowing to it...and Seb is technically the bull in this au and Fernando is the matador. There's just this unfortunate level of weird power inbalance that still lingers even though their rivalry is over and can't be affected anymore. There was no succinct answer about who truly was better because Seb was forced out of it. So there's always gonna be this level of "is he just pitying me? Is he just mocking me? Is he just patronizing me?" on Seb's part whenever Fernando praises him or makes dedications to him. And Fernando's always going to be haunted by the fact that there's no answer to who is truly better because he'll never know if Seb had reached his full potential or not. Anyways, they also have nasty sex while wearing their costumes and do weird bull/matador roleplay :)

[rivalkieran]

thought it would be fun to design special champion outfits for all my protags :3

[schrondingers-dumbass]

Burrows end; stotal recall: the bast of us II the stoatening- musteloid bugaloo is close to my favorite d20 series

[beneathsilverstars]

working on my designs for young odile and gf(?), and coming up with clothes is so stressful... i know id5 probably just drew whatever looked cool but i am sitting here like b but how am i supposed to decide what they'd wear if i don't know the socio-political context, fashion is a cultural conversation not to mention a product of supply chains and labor !!!!

[tea-cat-arts]

I'm willing to at least hear out most of the "xyz plot point is heavily tied to abc cultural context" brands of posts but the "wwx isn't meant to be read as morally gray" and "the western fandom made up Sizhui being wangxian's son" brands of post make me feel like my cultural ignorance is being used to gaslight me

[captaingimpy]

13 Assassins (2011) Review: A Modern Masterpiece in Samurai Cinema

13 Assassins, directed by Takashi Miike, is an electrifying revival of the samurai film genre. It stands as a modern counterpart to classics like Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, blending reverence for tradition with a willingness to push boundaries. Miike’s direction is as precise as it is chaotic, delivering a film that speaks to the soul of the samurai ethos while challenging our understanding of…

[goldrushreads]

[rawliverandcigarettes]

You said you're excited to spend more time on Sur'Kesh in Empire of Preys, and I'm excited for that too! We only got to spend like a minute on Sur'Kesh in canon, and I've always wished that we'd gotten to see more of that world. What do you imagine salarian architecture and design sensibilities as being like? I won't ask you to spoil the story, but I'm curious about any worldbuilding you've done along those lines that you'd like to share!

HELLO!!

Sorry for taking so long to reply to this wonderful ask! I kind of pondered a lot on what to talk about and how much I should talk about; but since you focused on architecture, I think I'll focus on that!

So, in The Empire of Preys, we spend most of our time (barred from one scene that takes place in a more remote city) in the country of Nkoma. What we call country and what salarians call country differs slightly, however: think of it more as an administrative district that exists more for the sake of resource repartition and ease of organization at a medium scale rather than a place, or an identity with strong cultural attachments that would involve nationalism or things like this --this would be much more true for cities (a practice encouraged and mirror by asaris) and clans in general.

There are two main focuses in Nkoma.

The first one is the city of Talat, considered a hotspot of diplomacy (where the administrative body called the Grand Symposium has its seat --basically where the Salarian Union is being ruled), business and tourism that spreads from the remnants of an old volcano all the way to the seaside coast. Its main landmark is a huge water dam used to control the level of the internal lake, assist with irrigation of the agricultural activity spreading around the city, and also partially turned into a luxury hotel. It's also the city that looks the most like the Citadel, Thessia, Armali, and every huge metropolis in the galaxy: it has tons of immigration and is the most overtly capitalist, with the least amount of relics from their past that isn't directly turned into museums.

The second is the city of Leyjung, which is Nkoma's second biggest city (and the biggest focus of the two within the narrative). It is much deeper inlands, deep within the rainforest --it's actually pretty close to the STG quarters that we see ingame (and MAYBE, maybe, we could see it in TEoP as well....)

It's a very old city with tons of history: it is roughly divided between the old town (tucked inside a valley following a large river) and the newer town that looms over it from the cliffsides. Both towns are riddled with technology; it's just that the old town still preserves a lot of its ocher-based and troglodyte buildings that allows for natural temperature regulation on top of being monuments to the city's past as a huge capital of the (since defunct) phassen empires.

The traditional structure of the salarian clan does not account for individuality. Therefore, the oldest kind of salarian building is the House: a very long building built over generations that try to account for the needs of the clan, a place where every salarian with a clan is always welcomed (but they have, for example, no concept of individual bedrooms; though people with importance within the clan have individual offices). The whole clan very rarely live together all at once; they generally have small individual open rooms that will sustain a dozen of salarians at a time (for example a ton of small kitchens rather than one big room where everybody eats all at once, and no real concept for group meals except for big celebrations). They also include walk-in showers everywhere; the goal is just to let water splash over you for a few seconds to cool off, and you're not even expected to remove your clothes while doing so (they also have communal pools for longer soaks, where public nudity is 100% fine).

Leyjung still has a large number of old clan Houses that have not been repurposed into commercial hubs or broken into smaller apartments like in Talat; most notably, the biggest Linron House is still in use while being considered a remarkable historical artefact as the history of that clan and that town stretch back for at least a thousand years.

One of the biggest challenges of the architecture of the town is to account for the extreme humidity: the rainforest surrounding and permeating the town is so dense that, twice a day, once at dawn (feshe qer) and then a little after midday (selecat qer), huge clouds of vapor start rising from the surrounding canopy as the air gets more and more suffocating, until it all breaks down into a brief torrential rain that soaks everything back late in the afternoon, and makes the evening and night the most pleasant temperature-wise. It happens... basically every day.

The town's architecture is therefore very concerned with avoiding wind and thunder damage, as well as trying to prevent stagnant water from swamping down the infrastructure. For example, hydrophobic plexiglas is very widely used. A lot of streets meant for pedestrians, especially in the older town, kind of follow this format (sorry for the janky perspectiiiive I'm bad at thiiis)

Using a lot of non-corroding mesh fence and avoiding to put salarians directly on ground, using a lot of triangular structures to let the rainfall glide to canals that are pushed back to the main river, with a ton of plants to absorb the excess humidity as much as possible and provide some relief from the heat.

The main problem that Leyjung face is: when is modernization too much modernization? What is preserving tradition, and what is refusal to change? What's opposition to galactic gentrification, and what is straight-up xenophobia? What's power to the individual VS what is the destruction of the collective?

Let's have Elections about it, maybe!! Surely that will solve everything!!

[gorillaxyz]

anyway *smiles* we finished watching a production of hedda gabler in class and i actually had to stop myself from screaming crying and ripping mynfucking hair out

[shafaqmum]

("Generation Gap: Bridging the Divide" Premium T-Shirt for Sale by Colorful-Garden gönderdi) Generation Gap, Generations, Old vs New, Vintage vs Modern, Tradition vs Innovation, Youth vs Elderly, Technology Evolution, Retro, Modern, Change, Progress, Connection, Contrast, Cultural Differences, Age Differences, History, Future, Heritage, Modernization, Unity

[vv-ispy]

I think my favourite thing about Keqing is that you can see the devs going "Okay we want to create a modern, capable character for our chinese nation who does things right regardless of tradition! .....but she can't be too modern and independent she's still got to respect the traditions :)"

[ezralva]

Cool Doji Danshi winter kimono mix&match