#my headcanon? sure but just as supported by the text as the other interpretation and i dont belitted and victim blame women to do it | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

fullscoreshenanigans · 1 year ago

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Sorry but this wouldn't leave my mind

This makes sense! I could also see #1 being the answer on the grounds of "no one is actually going to read this, just let them have it. (@punching-unicorns via replies)

To be fair to them, I default to this being true for the majority of the children lol

I'm not sure how thorough the vetting process is for library books, considering that the Morse code messages made it in without any trouble, although maybe the Ratris were able to circumvent any official processes like that.

It's lax enough where Ray had a general idea of what leisure entertainment electronics to request from Isabella and Norman could reasonably discern where the various components of the deactivator originated from.

(Chapter 28)

But also regulated enough where they aren't granted access to post-secondary medical texts for whatever reason (the perverse side of Shirai's sentiment for the children to maintain their "whiteness"/"lightness" given that it's done to uphold an illusion they're never intended to break free of)

(2020 Exhibition Interview)

And then a tangent for the Morse but in the case of the Grace Field escapees, it also helps that James has been dead for fourteen years by the time they notice it, and there's only one other group of kids that ever managed to successfully escape a premium farm over a decade prior.

(Mystic Code Book Chapter 7)

They might have been more discerning and thorough if anything similar had happened within the current incarnation of Grace Field and the supporters were a larger and more active threat.

It also works with my headcanon that demon leadership at the farms tends to cut corners in support of shorter-term results without really thinking about longer-term downstream effects. It's a little off-topic, but I struggle to understand how they thought generations of selectively cultivating the smartest possible humans wouldn't eventually lead to their downfall. I guess that was where sister/mom training was supposed to come in and disenfranchise anyone who lived that long.

All of this speaks beautifully to the series' commentary on capitalism. I wouldn't call it off-topic at all with how it adds to the hubris and entitlement of the upper echelons of demon society.

I originally was thinking about this because I wasn't sure how realistic it would be for anyone to use "blasphemous" swears and I want the fanfics in my head to be reasonably canon-compliant, but then that led me to more fundamental worldbuilding kinds of questions.

I fucking love the kids swearing debate with how the anime only gets a TV-14 rating in the US because Don, Norman, and Ray say "dammit" and "dumbass" dfjksdjfkj

Like I'm 100% confident none of the texts in Grace Field's library have the word "cunt" in them (maybe Isabella's personal study, but I'm assuming that's off limits to the kids), but it might crop up in texts in the bunker. "Fuck" and its variants are definitely present there.

I had a feeling you would have references and receipts to support either interpretation!

😎👍

Something I've been thinking about recently- do you think the libraries at the farms had religious texts? I'm of two minds about it.

1) They seem like books that libraries would generally have anyway, and other books probably have religious references such that the kids would want to know what the reference Is. It's enrichment.

2) I could see the higher-ups wanting to reduce any potential risks (anywhere from arbitrary rule-making that affects the kids to an uprising that affects leadership), and I just have a really hard time with the idea that along with all the other books in the GF library, Ray read an entire Bible before he was 12. Like in a series full of fantastic images and feats, that's where my suspension of disbelief ends.

Back half of #2 is killing me thanks klfdjkl

I'm inclined to go with #1 though.

"The Day Emma Cried" story from the first light novel gives us the greatest insight into the scope of Grace Field library's offerings. There's multiple books on philosophy, and unlike the medical texts, there's no caveat regarding their contents. This could be due to finding a cure for Norman's bout of illness being the focus of the story so the range is immaterial in the moment.

(Chapter 17)

But between that, Alex's book, and the mythology book that Ray admitted to not fully understanding, unaltered religious texts seem reasonable. The demons are confident enough with Grace Field's geographical layout and crude (per Ray) tracking technology that any risk associated with them is negligible. The vast majority of children never reach the age where they would be perceived as capable of taking what they read and using it as a rallying cry to mount an uprising in the plants, and the small number of girls who did live past their preteen years almost entirely had the fight snuffed out of them by the harrowing conditions of headquarters.

(Chapter 23)

We also have the kids bowing their heads and giving thanks at every meal. It's not an action limited to Christianity, but with Shirai purposely choosing a European setting for the beginning of the story due to feeling it lent itself better to anachronism, it's not a huge leap to think they associate it with some understanding of that faith. Isabella could cite the text as an explanation for why they do these things or any references in books they don't understand and offer them access to it, with the expectation most children wouldn't be interested enough to extensively delve into it.

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space-blue · 2 years ago

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Hello my friend, I am in need of some…..assistance, shall we say. My friend recently watched Arcane, and is severely unconvinced that Silco actually cared about Jinx. (I think they’re too much of a Vi stan to have ANY positive outlook on Silco /hj). I’m horrible at analyzing things and making good arguments, heh, so I was wondering about your own insights on this! (Unless you already have a post that digs into this btw) In any case, I love your posts and I hope you keep it up! ♥️

Heya anon!

Interesting ask! I'm flattered you came to me, but I'm not sure my answer will be exactly what you expect... Because technically, I don't need to say anything about Silco himself to make my case.

I think the issue here is that your friend mistakes their (perfectly legitimate) dislike for Silco with intent on the creators' part.

Arcane strove to convey the fact that Silco and Jinx love each other (platonically) and are in an extremely unhealthy codependent relationship of support that is the best either has available.

It is clear in text and subtext both, and in the many comments animators and writers have made about the show, and the countless meta posts made in fandom. It's just how it is. The fact that most everyone out there picked up on it should also be a good case for it.

Basically, Arcane is MEANT to be seen in that way. The artists behind the show *meant* for the viewers to understand that Silco loves Jinx and comes to realise she's as good as a "daughter" to him and that she matters more than his dreams of Zaun. It is text, and sometimes extremely unsubtle subtext.

Your friend is welcome to apply their own feelings — "I dislike Silco and how his influence separated the girls" for example. That's a perfectly valid way to feel! "He made Jinx worse" is also a very fine opinion to have, and tumblr is a great place to have such meta debates.

But such meta debates start ranging into the "interpretation" side of things, where you're filling in the holes in canon with your own perceptions.

"Silco didn't love Jinx" however goes against what the narrative is trying to SAY. It literally makes the ending IRRELEVANT. If Jinx and Silco didn't love each other in their own codependent and twisted ways, then his death at her hands would not trigger the mental state that provokes her to shoot the council.

If it wasn't profusely established that Silco cares for her, then his choosing her over his lifelong obsession for a Free Nation of Zaun would come out of left field.

Picture this: It's episode 9 and Sevika is wounded in the factory attack. Silco rushes to her side and kisses her brow and goes to beg Jayce for peace.

Does that sound likely? Wouldn't you be like... "erm... where does this come from?"

That's because the show establishes, in both text and subtext, that Silco and Sevika have a serious, no-nonsense work relationship around a shared dream and a shared ruthless nature, but they have no actual feelings beyond appreciation for what each brings to the table. Silco is definitely not partial to her. He doesn't take time out of his day for her, doesn't even tolerate her messing up the carpet when she's wounded. In comparison he's very soft with Jinx.

Anyway, plenty of posts have been made that point to Jinx and Silco's relationship being both adorable and toxic as hell. It's a well discussed topic. The fact they are close and in a father & daughter relationship is broadly accepted as "canon" because it's the text the show offers.

"Headcanons" then enters the picture, which is like "this is never shown in the show, but I believe that [Silco was an orphan who met Vander very young]".

I think it becomes “fanon” when such ideas get wildly popular.

Then there are "meta" posts, which are more along the lines of "Given what we see here and there in text and subtext, I believe the show is trying to say XYZ"

Some meta of mine for example is how I think Vander is who Silco learned the "power comes to those who would do anything to achieve it" lesson from. This is not text. It's the subtext that I chose to interpret that way. People can agree or disagree.

Another one with hot debate is "Did Silco strap Vander down because he planned on injecting him with shimmer?" — We don't know. I think not. Some people are convinced that yes, he would have. We can each write meta posts about it (and we HAVE). These are theories. Our "understanding" of the character of Silco influences our opinion. Each is valid.

This is a grey area, and the place your friend is probably sort of getting lost in. They have a dark opinion of Silco and mistake this to mean he's always bad (or meant to not love Jinx, because him loving Jinx makes them feel off) when he's clearly portrayed as a morally grey character. Someone with good goals, warped by his life of suffering and trauma at the hands of oppressors, who wants the best for everyone, whatever the (dire) cost. Someone who can be likeable or unlikeable, depending on the viewer. A very human, flawed character, but a character who has (1) person in his life he needs and emotionally cares for. Jinx.

For a different example... I dislike Cait. I think she's horrible. I despise her for her attitude in the show and have little patience for her despite many fandom friends excusing her by pointing out she's very sheltered. I could wax a long time about how my reading of her makes her a character that I despise, and how the show could have rescued her in my eyes with some minor adjustments of her attitude and lines of dialogue.

This does not mean Cait is meant to be despicable. The show clearly sets her up as a good guy. Naive, privileged, but wanting to do good. She's one of the better Piltovans actually, with her arc going up towards a greater understanding and compassion, instead of away from it (like Jayce, who instead radicalises himself by playing politics when he has 2 brain cells and they only meet when it's science time).

I can distinguish "what the show wanted Cait to be" from "what I'm taking from the show about Cait" from "the Cait I want to write about, how I can make her into a character I appreciate more because doing this and that would make her so much better".

For more on this topic of text/meta analysis, here are some recommendations!

Channels like Overly Sarcastic Productions have great videos like the "Trope Talk" series that dive into film and literary tropes.

Lessons from the Screenplay

Every Frame A Painting

Jacob Geller

Nerdwriter1

Now You See It

Just Write

I highly recommend Crash Course series on Media Literacy. It's short 10min-ish videos that make, well, the perfect crash course.

If you feel comfortable giving those recs to your friend, go ahead!

If you want to try and persuade her that Silco is "maybe not that bad" in a more subtle way and they actually reads fanfic, you can try and recommend my "Fathers and Daughters" fic.

It's majorly Vi's PoV as she's freed early from jail after a sham trial, and Silco takes her in, mostly motivated by making Powder better. It's hard for Vi, and it takes a LONG ASS TIME for her to come around to him being more than what she assumed, or accept that he likes Powder without any... intent behind it. I'm basically assuming Vi is like your friend, strongly biased against him, and slowly going on a journey of self discovery and growth where she influences everyone around her for the better, but also reconciles herself to the idea Silco isn't "evil" and Vander wasn't a perfect hero.

This might be the more... subtle way of getting your friend to pivot point of view. Like cooking a frog by slowly upping the temperature of the water lmao.

Hope this helped! End of the day, they don't have to like Silco. We all have taste and impressions. Nothing will make me like season 1 Cait but a better season 2 Cait (maybe), so I get it.

#Silco #Arcane #arcane silco #Jinx #arcane jinx #jinx and silco #Silco & jinx #meta #arcane meta #media analysis #media literacy #Anon ask #thanks for a great ask anon #youtube recs

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baoshan-sanren · 4 years ago

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im kind of curious why you use the phrase "absolute stagnation" to describe jc's character arc - although it's true he never goes from solidly Heroic to Villainous (or vice versa) or has some dramatic blackening, there are i think solid changes over the course of the story (following the sunshot campaign, his sister's death, etc). do you just mean that he never has a single big shift, or have i misread that?

oh boy, and that’s my last ask for the day

The thing about a character arc is that the character has to undergo significant changes in response to these events, otherwise it’s just... a bunch of events happening, and the character... growing older. If you look at Shen Jiu as someone who blackened in response to the events around him, and you look at Mu Qing as someone who grew and changed for the better in response to the events around him (plus a thousand years, give or take), then the fact that Jiang Cheng does not change one significant iota is pretty hard to miss in the text.

Character arc isn’t Jiang Cheng becoming a sect leader after his sect is slaughtered. Character arc would be Jiang Cheng’s character (as in the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual) undergoing significant change as a result of his sect being slaughtered, and as a result of him becoming a sect leader. The basic premise is “The character begins as one sort of person and gradually transforms into a different sort of person.” Jiang Cheng who blamed Wei WuXian for Jiang FengMian’s “inattention,” then for the death of his parents, then for the death of his sister, is exactly the same Jiang Cheng who would torture potential practitioners of demonic cultivation because they “might” be Wei WuXian. “Arc” is often used to describe a sweeping change; it implies that he became something he wasn’t previously (not him getting older and having more power to do things he couldn’t do as a disciple, or had no cause to do back then) and literally none of that... happens in text.

The reason I don’t do JC meta any more is bc CQL JC has little to nothing to do with MDZS JC. Like a lot of other characters in CQL, JC is pretty inconsistent, and definitely not faithful to his canonic counterpart. His canonical counterpart has a place, and a meaning, in MDZS as a xianxia deconstruction novel.

This Jiang Cheng:

blames Wei WuXian for everything he’d blamed him for before Wei WuXian's death. He is exactly the same person he was then, with an addition of a Sect Leader seat, more rumors about him, more power, and probably some nicer robes idk. Like, substantive change leading from one personality trait to a diametrically opposite trait? Not a thing that happens with JC at literally any point.

From a literary (and psychological) perspective I’ve always found JC fascinating, because I think he is meant to be frustrating. His lack of development is intentional, and reads like nails on chalkboard. We want our characters to grow, to change, to learn to let go of their resentments, to do some introspection, to work on themselves. If we can’t have that, we want them to go in the other direction. We want them to be an easily-definable villain, or to at least fit into the mould of one. A lot of fanon JC is exactly that, one or the other with very little room in between. Humans hate things they can’t define, things they can’t easily identify as either right or wrong; that’s no great mystery.

JC didn’t blacken, and he didn’t become a better person. JC didn’t do anything except build himself a timeless little bunker of his festering resentments, and then decide to just huddle there until the end of time. And although I’m sure the water is nice and warm in that bunker, and that A LOT of real people would react in exactly the same way, when you pick up a xianxia novel to read for enjoyment, that’s not what you wanna see happen. So people tend to add things that are only canon in CQL, or their own headcanons that can hardly be supported by text, in order to alleviate that discomfort. Which is understandable, but not who JC is in MDZS.

If there is character development to be had for JC, it should be happening post-MDZS. The golden core reveal is exactly the type of event that would precipitate a major character change. But there is no hint that mxtx meant to even give us that. And I understand, completely, the frustration in that decision, especially if JC is someone’s favorite character. But a lot of fanon interpretations of him, in my opinion, have little bearing on canon JC, so honestly, I really have no interest in discussing him any further than this.

#the untamed #mdzs #cql #jiang cheng #meta #Anonymous #ask for ts #and that's that for me today #i'll try and get to the rest next week #will reopen inbox once I get down to below 5-10 unanswered asks #:)

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themagnuswriters · 4 years ago

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Writing a Muslim Character

The Mods of the Magnus Writers discord server and community are putting together a variety of resources for Magnus Archives fan creators; these have been collated from articles on the topics, our own experiences, and the experiences of the members of the Magnus Writers discord. These are definitely not comprehensive or the only viewpoints out there, and are by no means meant as a way to police fanworks, but as a way to support and inspire fan creators in creating thoughtful and diverse works. Please note that external links will be added in a reblog to outsmart tumblr’s terrible tagging system, so make sure to check those out as well!

This resource in particular was put together by Mod Jasmine: hi, all!

While there are no canonically Muslim characters in TMA, Muslim headcanons are common in fanworks—particularly for Basira, and sometimes Jon (which I love to see!). I have cobbled together this post from my own experiences to help support and inform fans in these areas, and as part of my diabolical plan to get more Muslim!Basira and Muslim!Jon fics to shove into my brain.

First, two gigantic caveats:

I was raised Sunni Muslim in Egypt, which is a majority Sunni Muslim country, and still live there. This means my experience will be very different from someone raised in a majority Christian country like the UK, and different again if they are not Sunni and not Arab.

I am currently ex-Muslim. This does not mean I bear any ill will towards Islam or Muslims, just that it wasn’t for me, and I felt it was important to be upfront about that. I’ll be linking to resources by practicing Muslims in the reblog to this post, whether to add to my opinions and experiences or provide you with a different opinion. I am not here to put my voice over that of Muslims, just to do some of the work so they don’t have to. Obviously, if any Muslims have any additions or suggestions for this post, I’m happy to accommodate them.

Alright. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get started with the basics of writing a Muslim character.

(Warning: this is absurdly, absurdly long)

Basics:

Muslims follow two main sources of religious instruction: Quran and Hadith.

The Quran is the holy book, considered to be dictated by the angel Gabriel to the Prophet Mohammed, who then relayed what he was told to his followers. It is composed of surahs, or chapters, which have individual ayat, or verses. There are no varying versions of the Quran, later additions, or anything considered lost in translation. Any Arabic Quran is considered to be the same text that the Prophet Mohammed relayed, unchanged. As a result, while Muslims can debate interpretations of the Quran (although that’s often still left to the scholars), none debate the actual words of the text.

Hadith, meanwhile, are the sayings or teachings of the Prophet Mohammed. Their validity can be disputed, as they were written by his followers after his death, and mainly depend on having several witnesses for a specific saying or situation. The more witnesses there were, the more valid the hadith is considered to be.

When in doubt or should there be any contradiction between the Quran and Hadith, Muslims will always refer to the Quran first and foremost.

Denominations:

The bigggest (but not only!) divisions of Islam are Sunni and Shia, and both of those have separate madhabs, which are the separate thoughts and stances of specific Imams. When writing a Muslim character, a good first step would be to decide where your character’s family might have come from, as that could help inform which denomination your character might belong to. This will in turn inform things like the beliefs they grew up with, how they pray, their holy holidays, and so on. Obviously, all denominations fall under the bigger umbrella of Muslim, but can vary in practice.

Background:

The intersection of culture and religion affects a character beyond which denomination they likely belong to, such as whether they call prayer salah or namaz, the foods they might associate with Ramadan or Eid, and their community’s stance on things like hijab and alcohol.

One thing to keep in mind is that being Muslim is not synonymous with being Arab and vice versa. Not all Arabs are Muslim, not all Muslims are Arab or even Middle Eastern. In fact, the largest Muslim country in the world is Indonesia. That said, depending on your character’s race and backround, there is the potential they may have faced Arab elitism or other strands of racism within Muslim circles. Please see the reblog of this post for an article about one Black British Muslim woman’s experience with racism.

And, of course, your character and their family do not need to have been immigrants at all. They or their family may have been converts instead. According to most Muslim schools of thought, all that’s required for a person to be Muslim is stating the shahada in Arabic, honestly and with intent. It goes, “Ashhadu an la ilah illa Allah, wa an Mohammadan rasul Allah,” which translates as “I bear witness that there is no god but God, and that Mohammed is His prophet.” Shia Muslims, I believe, have an additional section, but otherwise that’s it. Recite that in front of witnesses with sincere belief and that’s all you need to be Muslim.

Pillars of Islam:

These are the duties or cornerstones of a Muslim’s faith and considered to be acts every Muslim should strive for. What the pillars are can, I think, differ between denominations, with Shia Muslims having additional ancillaries as well (any Shia readers, please feel free to correct me!) but both denominations agree that the following are important:

Salah—prayer

Sawm—fasting during Ramadan

Zakat—giving a certain percentage of income to charity or the community

Hajj—pilgrimage to Mecca

In all cases, these are considered mandatory only for those who are able. A person who cannot perform hajj, whether due to not being physically able to or lacking the funds to travel, is under no obligation.

Prayer:

Prayer is performed five times a day while facing the Qibla, which is the direction of Mecca. Prayer is formed of units, called rak’at, which consists of a set of actions done in a specific order. The “How to Pray Salah, Step by Step” article linked in the reblog of this post provides fairly good prayer instructions for beginners, so check it out for details! These include bowing, prostrating, and reciting some surahs.

Each of the five daily prayers has a different number of rak’at, as well as its own name and allotted time of day, as follows:

Fajr, which means Dawn and can be performed at any point until the sun rises (two rak’at).

Dhuhr, which means Noon (four rak’at)

Asr, performed in the afternoon (four rak’at)

Maghreb, which means sunset and can be performed at any point until it’s dark (three rak’at)

Isha, performed at night and can be done at any point until dawn (four rak’at)

The specific time of prayer will differ day to day and place to place, according to the sun, but those are the rough timeframes for each. It’s generally preferred that a Muslim does their prayer on time, but in practice some Muslims find it difficult to wake up for Fajr, for instance, and just try to make sure they get a morning prayer in before noon.

On Friday, there is a congregational Friday prayer at Dhuhr in a mosque called the Jumu’a prayer (which, fun fact, literally means gathering and is also the Arabic name for Friday!). Only men are required to take part in the congregation, however.

In Muslim majority countries, the time for prayer is announced by the adhaan, the call to prayer, from mosques and in media. This won’t be the case in the UK, and the character will likely have to rely on an adhaan app or looking up what time prayer should be.

There are various requirements for a prayer to be correct, chief of which is facing the Qibla and purity. Before performing prayer, a Muslim must purify themself by performing wudu, or ablutions, which basically involves washing the hands, arms, nostrils, face, head, and feet a specific number of times using clean water. The way I was taught these must be performed in a certain order, and the person shouldn’t speak during or after until their prayer is finished. This may be different for others.

Wudu is considered valid until nullified by bodily functions such as urinating, defecating, vomiting, flatulence, or any sexual activity. For Sunni Muslims, it’s also invalidated by going to sleep. If none of these have happened, a Muslim can perform more than one prayer using the same wudu.

Notably, a Muslim cannot pray if they’re on their period, as they’re considered in a state of impurity.

Another important requirement is that a Muslim be dressed modestly for prayer. The general guideline is that Muslim men should cover the area between their navel and knees with loose, non-revealing clothing, and that during prayer it’s preferred that they cover their chests as well Muslim women should cover everything except their face, hands, and feet. This means that a woman who isn’t hijabi would still wrap a hijab for prayer. For nonbinary Muslims, I don’t think there are specific guidelines yet, although please feel free to correct me.

If praying at home, a family may choose to pray together. In this case, the male head of the household usually stands at the front and acts as Imam, leading the prayer. Other men will tend to be in front of or beside women, as generally women should not pray in front of a man. This is the case even, especially, if he is not praying.

Children aren’t required to pray, as they’re considered innocent and have no obligations, but may want to take part early on or may be encouraged to practice.

Praying is one area you’ll find denominational differences. For example, while Sunnis fold their arms in prayer, Shia keep their arms to their side, and while Shia Muslims make sure their foreheads touch a piece of clay or earth when they prostrate, Sunnis do not. If you write your character praying, keep these details in mind.

Fasting:

During the holy month of Ramadan, Muslims fast from Fajr (dawn) until Maghreb (sunset) every day. This means they abstain from consuming anything—yes, even water, cigarettes, and medicine. They should also abstain from sexual activities and cursing. Most importantly, they must have the intention to be fasting. This means that not eating and drinking because they were asleep for that entire period of time or just lost track and forgot does not count as fasting.

Generally, the idea is more to try to be more pious and avoid sin throughout the month. It’s thought that the shaytan (or devil) is chained up during Ramadan, so any temptation or sinning is a person’s own doing. The way I was raised, I was taught that sawm/fasting is invalidated by sexual thoughts and raising your voice as well. Many people also try to dress more modestly during Ramadan, with some women opting for looser clothing or a headscarf. Many Muslims will try to read the whole Quran during Ramadan.

After Maghreb, Muslims break their fast with Iftar (which means breakfast, hah) and have a late night meal called Suhour. Since the Muslim calendar is a lunar calendar, Ramadan is 11 days earlier every year. Depending on when Ramadan falls in the year, there can be barely any time between iftar and suhour in certain parts of the world, as the sun is up for so much of the day.

Given the length of time and difficulty involved, there are exceptions and allowances for fasting. A person is not required to fast if they are:

A child (up to puberty)

Ill or has a medical condition such as diabetes

Pregnant

Travelling

On their period

In fact, if they are on their period it will not be counted, even if they do fast. That said, sometimes people choose to fast while travelling anyway, as travel is less strenuous now than it used to be. If they’re crossing time zones they will have to consider which time zone they’re breaking their fast to. As far as I remember, it’s based on the time zone of the place they just left or started their fast in.

If an obstacle to fasting is temporary, such as their period, they’re expected to make those days up with additional fasting before next Ramadan. Otherwise, they are allowed to make up for the lost fast in another way, such as by donating money or feeding fasting people. Whether due to societal pressure (which is formidable in Muslim-majority countries) or out of consideration for others who are fasting, those who are not fasting for whatever reason may often choose to hide this and only eat in secret.

If a person forgets they were fasting or accidentally consumes something, it does not invalidate the fast , and as soon as they remember or realise the mistake they can have the intention to fast again and continue with their day.

While children are exempt, many families will start them off by fasting for half a day so they can build up to a full day when they hit puberty.

Ramadan traditions vary wildly from country to country and culture to culture, but generally it’s a time for family gathering and celebration. Often there are special Ramadan-specific food, drink, and decorations, and it ends with Eid ul-Fitr which has its own specific foods and celebrations. Basically, imagine if Christmas lasted a month. That’s how big a deal Ramadan is.

In my experience, the first few days are usually the hardest. Water is what I tended to miss the most, even if I managed to stay up long enough or set an alarm to wake up to drink just before fajr, followed closely by swearing. Anyone who drinks caffeine or smokes cigarettes will likely find abstaining from those more difficult than water. By the end of the month, though, it gets much easier and I often got to the point where I barely noticed. I will say, however, that the longest I’ve had to fast has been maybe 16 hours. A summer Ramadan in the UK would be more difficult due to the much later sunsets.

Halal and Haram:

Halal means “permissible,” while haram means “forbidden.” You might have heard these words in passing before, such as halal food, but they are used for many areas of life.

Things that are considered haram include:

Consuming, serving, or trading in intoxicants, such as alcohol

Consuming improperly slaughtered meat or meat from forbidden animals, such as pork

Extramarital sex

Tattoos

Gambling

Men wearing silk or gold

A Muslim woman marrying a non-Muslim man (although it’s fine for a Muslim man to marry a non-Muslim woman)

Being immodest

Modesty is expected of all genders, including men. If you’ll recall from the section on prayer, the general guideline for male modesty is that they should cover the area between their navel and knees with loose, non-revealing clothing. Note that for women, modesty does not necessarily involve wearing a hijab. There is actually a ton of controversy as to whether the hijab is a fard (requirement) or not, as described in the following section.

The Hijab:

To be hijabi takes more than just throwing on a headscarf. As a word, hijab means “barrier” or “veil,” and a hijabi person would be expected to cover everything except their face and the palms of their hands, and to ensure that their clothes are loose and non-revealing. It all comes from an interpretation of two verses in the Quran that many scholars nowadays agree to mean the hijab is required, and that some say actually call for a face covering as well, which is called a niqab.

This wasn’t always the case, however, and these days there is still the occasional controversial scholar (I remember a few kerfuffles coming out of Egypt’s Al-Azhar mosque recently) saying it isn’t and has never been required at all. At least in the Arab world, this is largely due to the wave of Wahhabism (which is a specifically fundamentalist interpretation of Islam) that’s taken over the region in the past half a century. Before that, the idea of a hijab being a religious requirement was less widespread.

I’m not here to argue who’s right or wrong, just to make you aware that the hijab as we know it today hasn’t always been considered a requirement for a Muslim woman. Most of the women of my family never wore any form of head covering, but more and more they are an exception rather than the norm.

The choice of whether to wear a hijab can mean very different things, depending on the surrounding culture. For instance, my grandmother, the strictest woman I have ever known, got married in a very cute sleeveless dress that went just under the knees, and when she grew older she wore a head-covering more as a cultural indication of age rather than any religious reason. In my generation, in a country with a Muslim majority, lack of visible signs of devoutness have become almost a class marker, with some upper-class women using their lack of head-covering as a sign that they are “more Westernized” or “modern.” And again, I want to emphasize that this is the case for my country only.

This will be completely different for Muslim minorities, where the hijab can become a symbol of pride and unity.

I will say that it’s very rare for women to be forced into getting veiled, whether in Muslim minority or majority countries. I’m not saying it never happens, just that it’s not the “oppressive tool of the patriarchy” outsiders sometimes think it is. Women may face some societal pressure, but by and large it is considered a choice and often an empowering one. In fact, I have friends whose families discouraged them from wearing a hijab too young and emphasized only taking the decision when they were sure they wanted to. If writing a Muslim character when you’re non-Muslim, I strongly suggest not trying to tackle the story of someone forced into a hijab, as there’s a lot of nuance there and it’s very easy to fall into harmful stereotypes. The hijabi woman who gets “liberated” and takes off her hijab is also overdone and harmful. Please don’t.

Everyday Life:

Muslims are not a monolithic entity, and some will be more devout or religious than others. There are those who will pray their five a day and others who only pray during Ramadan or Eid, some who don’t drink and some who do, hijabis who dress only in loose clothing and those who wear tight trousers or show some of their hair, some who have tattoos, and some who may date or even have sex before marriage. However, this isn’t a carte-blanche not to do research when writing a Muslim character, because even if they break a rule of Islam, they will be conscious of it, may be concerned about their community’s response to it, and in any case will be affected by it.

For instance, I know many Muslims who drink alcohol. Some interpret the text differently, saying that since the sin is getting drunk then they won’t drink enough to get drunk, just buzzed. Some only do it on special occasions or on vacation, saying they know it’s a sin but it’s fine on occasion and they’ll repent later. All of them would probably dive under a table if they thought their family was nearby.

For more opinions on Muslims and dealing with alcohol, take a look at the “Islam and Alcohol” article linked in the reblog of this post.

Here are things that a character who is a practicing Muslim might do or be concerned about in their day to day life:

Checking ingredients to make sure they’re all halal. This goes for things like food, drink, medicine, anything consumable. Things like gelatine capsules are only halal if the source of the gelatine is itself halal, for instance.

Keeping up with their prayers. With five prayers a day, some will inevitably happen while they’re out of the house. Some Muslims prefer to just group their prayers when they get home, but since it’s preferable to do prayers on time, others may try to pray while out and about This means considering the following:

Finding a bathroom for wudu. Part of wudu involves washing feet and the head, which isn’t feasible in a public location or if the person is hijabi and doesn’t want to unwrap and rewrap their hijab. In that case, they can generally wipe a wet hand over their socks and top of their head covering.

They may carry a prayer carpet or have one stashed in a convenient location, but it’s not a must.

Finding a clean and secluded place to pray. Generally, it’s not done to pray in a place where someone will pass in front of you, and a woman must also take care to pray away from men’s eyes.

Figuring out where the Qibla is. Luckily, there are apps for that.

If a woman is not hijabi, she would have to carry a veil and, depending on her clothes, something to cover up so she can pray.

If they’re hijabi, they’ll probably have to adjust or re-wrap their hijab throughout the day, depending on the material and their activities. This would typically happen in bathrooms or any other space that doesn’t include men, as they can’t reveal themselves to any men who aren’t of their immediate family. For more on the hijab, and the day to day realities of wearing and wrapping one, take a look at the links provided in the reblog of this post.

A Muslim woman may choose not to accept handshakes from men who aren’t family. She has probably considered how to deal with that potential awkwardness.

If they’re fasting, they might carry some dates or biscuits or something in case they need to break their fast while on the go.

If making plans, they might say, “Insha’allah” which means “God willing.” I was always admonished to do so to acknowledge the future is entirely within God’s hands.

If asked how they are, they might reply with “Alhamdullilah” which means “Thanks be to God.”

When starting to eat, they may say, “Bismillah,” which means “In the name of God” and when done eating may say “Alhamdullilah.” These can also be invoked silently.

As you might have noticed, Allah’s name is invoked pretty often. While it’s not preferable to swear using God’s name just to make a point (“Wallahi”), there’s nothing against it, really.

Fundamentally, an important thing to remember is that Islam is a religion of ease and not hardship. This is an actual Quranic quote. What this means is, it may seem like there are a lot of rules to keep in mind, but there are also a ton of allowances for when those rules aren’t feasible, just like the case for fasting above. Other allowances include how an elderly or disabled person who may not be able to perform the motions of prayer can pray while sitting in a chair or even lying in bed. If there isn’t any clean water to purify before prayer or if using the water would mean lack of drinking water, a Muslim can use dust or sand to purify, and if no dust or sand is available then they don’t need to purify at all and can simply pray.

This means that, say, if your Muslim Jon wants to pray while kidnapped by the circus, he can, even without being able to perform wudu, even without knowing where the Qibla is, even without being able to move or say anything at all.

For more day-to-day tidbits, check out the “More on writing Muslim characters” link in the reblog of this post.

LGBTQ Muslims:

Needless to say, Queer Muslims absolutely do exist, and their being Muslim doesn’t cancel out their queerness or vice versa. While there are Quranic verses that have been interpreted as condemning homosexuality, there are also other interpretations, and queerness has existed in Muslim societies for ages. There was a ton of homoerotic imagery among Abbasid poets during the Golden Age of Islam, for example.

However, modern-day attitudes can be difficult to get around, and queer Muslims may have difficulty finding their place in both Muslim spaces and queer spaces, the latter which often expect them to reject religiosity.

Although I am queer myself, I don’t feel it’s my place to speak for queer Muslims and their relationships with their communities beyond this, so I’ll let some queer practicing Muslims speak for themselves. Please see the reblog of this post for valuable contributions from queer Muslims about their experiences.

Miscellaneous:

This is mostly for all the random tidbits I thought up while writing this that didn’t fit anywhere else and also because I don’t know when to quit apparently, SO!

Allah is just Arabic for God. Muslims can and do use these terms interchangeably, such as saying “God willing,” instead of “Inshallah,” even in an Arabic-speaking country.

Also, God has 99 names! Just a fun fact for you there.

The Devil in Islam is pretty different from his Christian counterpart. Referred to as Iblis or Shaytan, among other names, he is not a fallen angel and there is no great revolt story, nor is he considered a root of all evil. Instead, he is a djinn made of smokeless flame who refused to bow down to Adam, as he felt he was made of superior stuff and not about to bow to a creature made of mud. His disdain for humanity is what has caused him and other shayateen/demons to try and tempt humans.

A person’s right hand is considered purer than their left, so it’s encouraged to always eat with your right hand. Unfortunately, this does mean left-handed people face something of a stigma—or at least that’s the case here in Egypt. My cousins, both lefties, both eat with their right hand, though they do everything else with their left.

Similarly, it is considered better to enter spaces with your right foot, though only the most devout are likely to think of this all the time. This is especially considered for entering a mosque or new home.

A Muslim might say or write “Peace be Upon Him” whenever the Prophet Mohammed is mentioned, written as (PBUH), and “Subhanuh wa Taala” when mentioning Allah, written as (SWT).

The Evil Eye is mentioned in the Quran as “hasad,” and considered to be a very real thing. This jealous or envious energy is considered able to ruin good things in your life, even if the jealous person didn’t intend to. There are some surahs that are considered good to ward against it, as well as incense, the colour blue, the number five, and the symbols of the nazar (which is a round, blue-ringed eye) and the khamsa (an open five-fingered palm, also known as the Hand of Fatima). The nazar, khamsa, and belief in the evil eye aren’t unique to Islam at all. What is unique to Islam is that a Muslim might preface a compliment with “Masha’allah” which means “As God wills it,” to ward off their own evil eye.

Much of the Quran in Arabic rhymes and is very poetic, which can make surahs easy to memorise by rhythm. It can also make recitations by a skilled reader very lovely.

#the magnus archives #tma #writing resources #muslim characters

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himynameis4 · 2 years ago

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This post ended up being much less headcanon-y explaining tartarus RIP—i just… i started talking ab Bianca & it took on a life of it’s own. I figure it makes sense to give insight into HOW i arrived at my conclusions ab her perspective tho, the way i present it in the orig post—i WILL post ab tartarus & elaborating on that tho!!!!! Bc ik that’s what you originally asked ab @bottomlessabyssposts, this just… well, took on a life of its own.

(Hi again @chiquitablanquita! Not sure if this type of post is your speed lol—definitely a different format than the last on/original post, but figured i might as well share it anyway! Again, seriously No Pressure to read—same goes for you @bottomlessabyssposts btw!!! Also @chiquitablanquita your tags made me giggle—I chose to take it as a compliment, if that’s alright with you, though i apologize for any emotional distress?)

Okay. So. This is more text-analysis-y—both in the way i write it & in the presence of the pages themselves, LOL. These are some of the pages i reference when trying to understand Bianca’s character, because we get so little of her, and how i interpret them. The highlighted sections are, like, the important bits, so even if you do wanna read the post you don’t have to read the entire damn page (this post’ll be long enough as it is RIP). Like i said—very different format than the original, so please don’t feel obligated to read both/either if it’s not to your taste!

This is an image of a page from The Titan’s Curse. Here, Nico’s about to watch the orientation film, and he asks Grover about the rating of the film, saying that Bianca’s “kinda strict,”—essentially, it’s one of several examples we have indicating that Bianca acted as a parental figure for Nico, including restricting what media was “appropriate” for him. The fact that Nico asked about the rating indicates that he cares about Bianca’s restrictions… but his excitement at pushing the boundary & watching the “PG-13” video hints that he probably wasn’t the most obedient.

This is a picture of a page from the House of Hades. Highlighted is Nico saying that Bianca was the only one who accepted him, and she died. This is post-Nico being outed by Cupid in front of Jason, and he and Jason are… calmly chatting ab that lol. (Jason’s trying so hard i love him. He just… he’s trying). In the context of their conversation, Bianca’s “acceptance” of Nico could be related to the whole, children-of-Hades-treated-like-sewage thing Nico mentioned earlier, but it seems to be more related to Nico’s sexuality, given the overall situation, which is an interpretation I think others have as well & the one i take. That interpretation informed my understanding of Bianca in the first post.

This is Bianca in The Titan’s Curse, as she’s learning the greek gods are real, after Dr. Thorne’s attack. Highlighted is her snapping/getting frustrated at Nico while she’s overwhelmed. She understands the gravity of the situation, whereas he’s naively acting excited, and she lashes out at him in response. Note also her response to his mythomagic game, & how she minimizes it. I keep in mind that Bianca’s dealing with A Lot in this scene, including having just been attacked by a monster/her principal, almost trafficked by said monster/principal, attacked by a mortal helicopter with guns, rescued by a mythical gang of girls for stories, witnessed a girl fall off a cliff rescuing them… so it MAY not be a perfect gauge for how Bianca reacts when generally frustrated/overwhelmed… BUT it’s the only one we’ve got, because we don’t get a whole lot of time with her. (There’s another scene, earlier, of her scolding Nico that supports this interpretation imo, tho.)

This is another page from the Titan’s Curse. Artemis is in the process of convincing Bianca to join the hunt. To counter Percy’s protests—Percy is bringing up Nico, saying that Bianca shouldn’t leave him behind, basically—Artemis informs Bianca that Nico will be taken care of at camp, that she’ll still see him, but he won’t be her responsibility. While it is a direct response to Percy’s protests, keep in mind that Artemis has centuries of experience recruiting girls—she’s making this argument because she thinks it’ll convince Bianca. Note that the phrases Bianca repeats are not “taken care of” but “a new family” and “free of responsibility”—Bianca is allowing herself to be selfish. Those are the things she wants for herself, not for her brother. Still, this and later information indicate that it’s important to her that her brother be taken care of, which informed my understanding of her.

This is another screenshot from The Titan’s Curse (surprise, surprise, since it’s the only book where Bianca’s alive). Highlighted is the “twelve years old” & “wanted assurance” because… like. She’s twelve, guys. She hasn’t had anyone to lean on before now. She craves friends & a community & guidance. She knows what’s best for her, but she wants the support to be able to pursue that. In a perfect world… she’d be able to do so without the added guilt/complications/impact on Nico (nevermind her death), but the situation isn’t so simple here. We get another indication that she wants Nico taken care of, for people to look out for him. She trusted/got… not attached to, but admired? Relied on? Percy very quickly, which is something I noted & will talk more about in… another post, i guess? Because I’ve decided i’m doing these? *sigh* i just want more bianca content ok???? While i have my interpretation(s) of why she latched on to Percy so quickly, one could also take this to mean that she was looking for a reason/assurance to take that leap & leave her “parental” role in Nico’s life. Percy, in this interpretation, simple gave her the assurance/excuse she needed. (That’s not exactly my interpretation, though. One thing that’s interesting is that these passages/quotes have multiple layers/meanings/clues within them on Bianca & who she is as a person—rn I’m just exploring the aspects that are relevant to the interpretation of Bianca I presented in the first post, there’s plenty more to talk ab lol).

This is literally the page just after the last image (fighting the urge to say “screenshot” so hard rn bc they’re NOT they’re literal pictures of physical pages and YET). Highlighted here is the stuff on Bianca raising Nico, and the reasons she gives Percy for her leaving Nico & joining. She wanted her own life & friends—she even says, point blank, that is was a selfish decision. Bianca is a self-aware person… she made the decision she felt was best for her. (& tbh CHB may not have actually been a better choice—nvm ill talk ab that later). The being a big sister “24 hours a day” is important—she could be talking ab how being a sister consumed her/subsumed her identity, she could be exaggerating… while I think both of those possibilities are valid conclusions, I also think she means this in a more literal sense, which i’ll come back to/elaborate on—in a different post.

This is a page from the Battle of the Labyrinth, when ghost!Bianca finally responds to Nico’s summons. This is what I drew from when I spoke about Bianca ignoring/numbing herself a bit to Nico’s upset in the first post, although that’s not exactly what’s happening here—like i said, there’s a lot of layers to these scenes—it is AN aspect/conclusion one could draw from this. She was avoiding him. She was hoping he’d give up. She was waiting out the storm. Bianca was sad, she’d dreaded encountering Nico/facing his emotions (…& facing her own guilt?).

This is literally the page just after the last page we talked about. A few important things here. 1) we see Bianca, again, being reflective & calm in the face of Nico’s upset. She’s talking him through what he’s feeling, sort of spoon-feeding him (& the readers) the answers/insight… in the process, she’s also talking over/for him a bit, & projecting her own understanding/interpretation of the situation onto him. She could be totally right (she’s partially right) but that’s just something I noticed about this exchange. One of the things in my original post was that Bianca talked Nico down from his big emotions (that is, when she didn’t ignore his big emotions because she didn’t have the capacity to deal with/help him with them). This is kind of where i drew that from. Something that’s frustrating, though, is that we almost NEVER see the di Angelos in their “natural state.” We just catch glimpses of their dynamic as it was, and because of the extreme/unusual circumstances we see them in (rn Bianca is a literal ghost who’s been stalking her brother & helping/making another person spy on him via iris messages… Nico has been homeless in a death maze with an evil ghost for company while mourning his sister & planning murder…), we can only speculate as to how they were. Still, I think the way Nico sought Bianca’s ghost for guidance (another screenshot—i keep getting off track, i’ll talk about that in a later post) indicates that “talking him down” was something she probably did. It was a part of their dynamic before demigods & monsters came in & stuff went to shit, basically.

Okay. Now. Still on this screenshot. The second thing i wanna talk ab is Bianca’s fatal flaw. This is where I think Bianca’s understanding of her brother & his state of mind becomes more inaccurate. Bianca tells Nico that children of hades hold grudges, it’s their fatal flaw. A) i don’t think fatal flaws are universal among demigod siblings/siblings period, potential trends aside, snd B) holding grudges is NOT Nico’s fatal flaw. There’s a really good post about it i saw somewhere, but for the purposes of this argument let’s agree that grudges aren’t his fatal flaw, even if we do see him “hold grudges” (& even then there’s room for debate lol).

So where did bianca get this information, & why does she believe it? She COULD’VE learned it from her dad, but probably NOT—nico throws the whole “holding grudges” thing into hades’ face when he’s trying to get Hades to fight on the gods’ side in The Last Olympian, and Hades did NOT seem particularly convinced. She could’ve learned it when her soul is being judged, and she gets sent to Elysium, but… we’ve seen a “soul sorting,” Hazel’s, in fact, & they didn’t get into personal fatal flaws, much less trends for fatal flaws of an entire bloodline (NOT that Hazel’s experience is dispositive, this is certainly still a possibility, we have a sample size of exactly 1). Maybe, upon becoming a ghost, Bianca is simply… wiser to the ways of the world. Has ~magical ghost insight~. (Can you tell how convincing i find that explanation? 😅). Maybe she met another child of Hades.

All possibilities, but I think it’s more likely that she learned the information as a ghost from someone she trusted, and then internalized it because SHE related to it—& then projected that onto Nico. If Zoë, for example, made a comment about Hades children holding grudges/that being their fatal flaw, Bianca would likely trust her—but she’d believe her if the information sounded true for Bianca herself. Essentially, the information would sound true if Bianca herself has a tendency to hold grudges—hence, my interpretation of Bianca having a grudge against Nico, and then projecting that onto him a bit when she tells him his fatal flaw is grudges & that he’s mad at her for leaving him. (There, she’s projecting her own guilt and anger at herself, a bit. Doesn’t mean she’s totally wrong about NICO’S feelings, but her perspective colors her understanding).

Whether or not BIANCA’S fatal flaw was grudges is ALSO up for debate, but fatal flaws are weird in the pjo universe, and Bianca, at the very least, likely believed it was a flaw of hers. So yeah.

I… hope the formatting works on this RIP. Working with the photos was a trip. If anybody has like questions or was confused or has a different opinion feel free to ask/counter—idk how “awake” the pjo tag/fandom is atm, but this is like, my ever-present hyperfixation lol. I love discussing this shit. I had to hold myself back from getting more photos of pages/talking about/explaining Every Little Thing, bc there are so many Things to think about/explain, & i am incapable of brevity. But this is my very long/drawn out explanation of the thought process that goes into some of the ways I interpret/understand Bianca di Angelo. I just… i love her sm. One of my favorite things ab her is how flawed she is, she’s just—she’s twelve. She’s so human. I adore Nico, & i wish we could’ve seen more of her outside of who she was to her brother, because all she wanted was to be a person/exist outside of what she was to him, and since her death/in the pjo fandom often that’s all she gets to be. AND ppl are so mean to her and i just—she deserves better idk. So yeah.

I will never shut up about her, & nico, & the di angelos. Like ever. 😅

@bottomlessabyssposts hiiiiiiiiiii! I have. So many things to say ab Bianca but I wanted to share at least a lil bit even if i cannt write them all down??? The thing is, like, MOST of it is written down but not necessarily in a way that’s coherent to anyone except me RIP, so i’m going through & looking for snippets that are like. Easiest to understand, y’know? & also with the spot i drew from from canon to arrive at my headcanon—this is sure as shit not “analysis,” exactly, but there’s so much blank space left in the riordanverse (& don’t get me started on rick constantly contradicting his own work—i’m obsessed w/canon compliance or at least canon adjacency so he drives me BATSHIT bc his stuff DOES NOT MAKE SENSE IN THE UNIVERSE HE MADE—)

(Also! Hi @chiquitablanquita! We haven’t interacted much yet but i figure pjo is a shared interest so might as well tag you in this??? 🤷. Still getting the hang of tumblr friends/etiquette/mutual-ship lol. This is a no-pressure tagging zone!!!)

Okay. Bianca. I adore her sm. I’ll have to make a series of posts ab her probably to write all my di Angelo headcanon stuff down but I figure—I’m not sure if i should start w/her in Tartarus, her pre-the books, or my headcanon for what happened to Maria that’s soon to be jossed RIP.

I think i’ll start post-move to america, Maria’s death & casino era, & not delve into pre-move to america headcanons just yet? Yeah, that makes sense. Might dip my toe into headcanons for her powers/potential powers tho!

First thing you have to know, i think? Bianca’s fatal flaw is holding grudges. Bianca’s—not Nico’s. Obviously that’s not what killed Bianca in the end… (except, it kind of is. Running from that parent of herself, acting in accordance with it… except that wasn’t the only factor influencing her). So many think her flaw relates to responsibility, accepting it, evading it, etc. But Bianca herself feels her fatal flaw—or at least, one of her major flaws—is holding grudges. Being resentful. Being resentful of her brother, specifically.

She loves Nico. She loves him so, so much. He’s her world. And she hates him. No, wait, of course she doesn’t hate him—he’s her little brother, and she loves him, and it’s not like he’s doing anything wrong, it’s just—it’s the little things. (This bit draws a bit from the preview—just that Bianca & Nico shared a bed in the Lotus Casino according to Nico’s nightmare/memory dream sequence, which tracks for me in terms of sibling dynamics). He’s just… he doesn’t get it. How dangerous things are. She protects him from it. And he’s always around, always needing her, wanting to her play his game and help him with homework and hold his hand and—she never gets a moment to breathe. To bond with her classmates, not that she’d been making much headway on that, anyway.

She resents him for getting to be young and innocent and letting her worry about the big stuff and depending on her and following her rules and not following her rules. She tells him not to go watching the pg-13 movies and he’ll listen, mostly—but how are you supposed to parent a kid through making friends? How are you supposed to parent, period?! She knows she snaps at him too much, lashing out—she knows she’s not what he needs, and she feels guilty as hell for it, but also resents the hell out of him for putting her on the pedestal, shoving her in this role. Then she hates herself for resenting him, he’s only ten, and she loves him, he doesn’t deserve this, doesn’t deserve her, and all her messy, frustrated love, but she doesn’t want this role. She doesn’t want to be a mother. She’s only 12. And there’s no one to talk to, it’s only him, and he can’t listen to her cry or he won’t listen to her, she needs to be the adult for him, their teachers are next to useless.

It’s worse when he tries to help, not better. When he’s sweet and protective and gives her space…. Because then she’s angry at him for not being able to be enough, to be all she needs, because she doesn’t have anyone else either, and he doesn’t even give her the chance to find others, clinging to her like—like a goddamn boa constrictor. And then she hates herself for putting him in that position, of having to take care of her—she’s the big sister, and he’s so little, and he needs her, and then she’s back to resenting him again, and it makes her want to scream. (Or rather, to run.)

Nico’s different. She knows it. She watches his cheeks bleed red, regaling her of conversation after conversation with a boy in his grade (she’s seen them together. The boy doesn’t seem interested in talking to Nico, but is too shy to tell him so. Her heart breaks for her brother, even as she empathizes with the other boy, but all of it is so… numb. Detached. So she listens and nods and doesn’t say a word). She’s not sure if he knows, if he remembers… but she does. And she doesn’t know how to protect him. She doesn’t know how to help him. Is loving him enough? Can it be? When it’s her messy kind of love, cutting and protective and distant at once?

She ignores him, sometimes. He’ll be having a bad day, or a hard day, or a restless night, or a violent one—it’s written over his face, every time, he’s always been so easy to read (for her, at least). A coiled ball of energy and rage and fear and pain, unable to process it, any of it (is it because she hasn’t taught him how? (How could she, when she’s barely learned herself?)). He lashes out at her, too, you know, for all she lashes out at him, for all he’s young and innocent and sweet and doesn’t understand—she lets him rage and lets him storm off and lets him cry and doesn’t feel a thing. Or—feels dull, dreary, waiting it out like a thunderstorm as opposed to reaching out, asking what’s wrong, asking how to help.

She’s not sure if this makes her an awful person or not. Does she not care? He’s her brother, her world, he’s hurting, and she just—

But it’s also a matter of survival, she knows. Nico feels things, and they fill up a room, they don’t leave space for anything or anyone else. Numbing herself to it is how she gets through, how she can stay calm, talk him down from it… on the days she talks him down from it. But she can’t afford anything else, or else he’d fill her up inside, and she’s have no room left for her.

She needs to be selfish to survive. If she doesn’t survive… she doesn’t know what happens to him, if she doesn’t survive. Her messy, selfish, flawed love is all he has, the shield between him and the rest of the world. So she lets herself be selfish, for her own sake, for his. And she tries to make it to the other side.

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beelspillowpet · 4 years ago

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A Lesson in Love - A “Character Analysis” on Asmodeus

I had to come for the tracks, wigs, and weaves of bitches when Pomade dropped because I saw people talking shit about my boy. This was a milestone “project” or “reward” I guess?

I hit 400 followers today while I was out running errands!!! Thank you guys SO SO MUCH for the love and support! I can’t WAIT to produce more content for everyone!!!

Below the cut there WILL BE talk of season 3, as well as some talk of chapter 16. There’s a healthy amount of theorizing on his personality as well, I hope you don’t mind! This came out more like a plea to get people to change their minds about how Asmo really is, rather than a comprehensive essay of sorts. So here we go!

There’s something we apparently still need to talk about in this fanbase. The unrealistic idea of Asmodeus being a sex freak, and an unreliable person in general despite there being little proof of it. We need to set a few things straight about Asmo moving forward.

December 25th rolled around and Asmo’s audio drama and song were released. I take it everyone enjoyed both parts, as well as I did. My timeline both on twitter and tumblr were filled with Asmodeus content, as well as the other brothers and such. But I mostly got Asmo content. However, in peeks and cracks, if I looked hard enough, I still saw people who absolutely loathed Asmo or who were indifferent to him. Keep in mind; I think it’s okay. You don’t have to like everyone.

I’ve only joined the fanbase in September, but even I could tell some of these takes were old fashioned. I downloaded the game on October 17th, a very important anniversary for me, while I

was still in bed in the morning. I blazed through the entire story of season 1 and now I am stuck in season 2, specifically in Chapter 24. I obviously don’t have every card of Asmodeus with his Devilgrams, but I have been analyzing his character over the past few days for this.

So needless to say, I have a considerable amount of information on him, as well as personal thoughts that may help some learn to love him. Or at the very least, from spreading a negative idea of him around as if it were true. Enough that should help clear his name, so to speak.

Let’s look at his title; Avatar of Lust. Now naturally the thoughts that come to your head are sex and other sexual bits. So I can understand how some people would come to the conclusion that he’s just a sex freak. But if you look under the surface of his title, like I’m sure you’ve had to for your own personal favorites (*cough* Lucifer, Belphie, and Satan ESPECIALLY) you would discover that Asmodeus is more than just about sex. In fact, sex takes up very little of his pass time, if you were to believe it!

In recent chapters, as I’ve been told, Asmodeus doesn’t really get around much anyways:

Granted, this was said while in Celestia, but I imagine not much has changed for him since his fall, as well as his brothers.

Not really comfortable being with just anyone, huh…? Sounds like someone who doesn’t have sex so warily often as you’d think!

Being lustful can come in many shapes and forms. It can be merely in appearance, which Asmo is not afraid of doing. He’s very comfortable about skinship and it’s very apparent in how he dresses and acts that he wants you to adore his body. To worship it! Maybe not sexually, but aesthetically! Being lustful can mean just thinking about sex or sexual scenarios often, which if you take a peek at Asmo’s chat’s either with you or his brothers, is very apparent too.

Personally, I believe that people would assume he is not good in a relationship because he would have a “cheating problem”. I don’t think Asmo is a monster, just like I don’t think any of the brothers are monsters. They may be demons (technically fallen angels) now but they used to be angels too. Their falling out with their Father doesn’t mean they’ve completely abandoned morality, it was a rebellion for Lilith’s right to live. Not for them to sin as they pleased. For all we know they might have been fine in Heaven otherwise! (with the exception of Lucifer.)

A monster knows right from wrong and chooses evil anyways. An ignorant person doesn’t know right from wrong. Asmodeus is not a monster, nor is he ignorant.

When Asmo genuinely loves you, I think he would take steps to calm down that side of him, if it were to exist. Lust is fairly limited, but it is a part of love to some extent. LOVE is vastly different. Love has many languages, and they aren’t all spoken either. For me, personally, I found that Lucifer’s love language can be either very direct, or roundabout so as to not let it go to your head, for an example. Asmo is just far more direct about his care for you.

I feel as though Asmo gets a lot of crap constantly for his presumed nature and because we don’t get to see much else of him at first, especially in season 1, his impression on us sort of stays. With most of the fanbase either somewhat new to the game or somewhere lost in the sea of the difficulty curve that is season 2, we can only assume based on what we’ve seen, and what others have headcanoned about him.

Let’s break and talk about Satan for a moment; this is going somewhere.

I’m led to believe that Satan can control his sin fairly well. He’s easy to get irritated, sure, but he isn’t as much of a walking ball of rage as I suspected. I would argue that, aside from Leviathan, Satan can handle his sin the best out of the brothers. But again, we’re forgetting about Asmo. The Avatar of “Lust”. Like I’ve shown before, he doesn’t really sleep around a lot, according to anon.

At worst, Asmo being flirty is through text and he’s not actively trying to sleep with you. It can be interpreted that way, but for me personally, it comes down to having a friend that is very up close and in your personal space.

(I myself am one of these types of people. Having ADHD, my social cues are always sort of off, and I’ve struggled with coping with it for years. With my best friend, we have seen each other naked countless times and have slept in the same bed as well. We were never romantic with each other. We were just very comfortable being close and personal with each other.)

I’d like to point out also that Asmo isn’t even there for most of season 1 too. Which can give you the idea that maybe he just was out sleeping around a lot, but to me he probably just went out partying a lot. You don’t get known that fast for sleeping around. Maybe in 5,000 years, sure, but I’d imagine being a party boy, as his Devilgram “Guided by Desire” suggests.

So the idea that Asmo isn’t in the house a lot because he’s out having sex all the time isn’t true is it? He’s probably just out partying, which can LEAD to sex with someone sure, but again, Asmo doesn’t feel comfortable doing that, now does he?

I feel like of all the boys, Asmo is the one who radiates with everyone else the most. Most people will never realize how surreal it is that Asmo is faking it until he makes it. He doesn’t always think he’s beautiful, or that he’s worth all the love he’s striving and straining to get. Something that is extremely relatable for a lot of people with self-worth issues. Asmo is just like that, but instead being sarcastic and self-deprecating, he simply works to make himself look as beautiful as possible, so that in his eyes, his beauty matches the affection he gets.

Which is why, when he falls in love with you, it’s strange. You are constantly telling him he’s nice and pretty, but you aren’t lusting after him. You’re just being nice. It may just be me, but when people are overly nice just for the sake of being nice, I’m very attracted to that. That is Asmo, to some extent. The fact that he reflects the insecurities and habits of others so clearly may make others uncomfortable, but that brutal honesty veiled behind insecurity is what a lot of people with self-image issues deal with.

Now for me to share my favorite personal idea for Asmo that completely changed how I saw him in season 1 onwards; Asmodeus is an empath. Now let me explain:

First, what is an Empath?

The term empath comes from empathy, which is the ability to understand the experiences and feelings of others outside of your own perspective. Seems simple, right? Everyone can do this to some extent. However, what makes you an empath is the fact that empaths genuinely feel the same pain as you do. So much so your experience becomes a very personal part of their own. They are capable of being able to feel other people’s emotions without them speaking, or even showing signs of it through their body language.

This would explain, for me personally, why there’s so little of him in season 1. The intensity of what goes on in the house, his sensitive soft-spoken mannerisms, the only time he truly gets mad is when he’s childishly arguing with Mammon? Asmo is afraid of true conflict, he’s afraid of violence and negative emotions. Let’s face it; everyone is indifferent or hates you at the start of the game.

While this changes fairly quickly, all the intense feelings come to a head in chapter 16. All those negative emotions swirling around, of course Asmo isn’t going to want to be in the house when it’s that intense. The attic didn’t just disappear completely, too. Belphie was still in the attic hating humans. That negative emotion could be affecting Asmo and he didn’t know why, so he could have been out of the house more.

Where Asmo can feel the emotions of others, it may mostly be the negative ones because they fill him with anxiety and panic if it persists. Which can be helpful in making him so urgent to want to make others smile and feel better, right?

Imagine being intimate with Asmodeus, and suddenly you aren’t in the mood for it anymore but don’t want to make things awkward. He could pick up on it in an instant and wouldn’t get mad because he understands how you feel completely.

Now to close this out about something that genuinely hurts me; Asmodeus is a narcissist.

I mean, the wiki says that he is, but personally? No, no he isn’t. Since when is loving yourself a bad thing? Sure he may go a bit far sometimes, but people with self-image issues need to go a little harder than the rest to make sure they're getting the love they need.

(Talking about myself AGAIN, but I do this a lot. At random, I will look up in my own mirror in front of my desk that I sit in front of all day and tell myself I am a cute bitch. I am VERY VERY cute and anyone would be lucky to have someone as drop dead gorgeous as myself. I say that a few times a day. In reality, I am very insecure about my looks. I do believe I’m cute, but sometimes it’s hard to say it. Which is why I force myself. Why wouldn’t Asmo do the same?)

Talking yourself up to be as beautiful as a sex god is no easy task, but Asmo isn’t the Avatar of “Lust” for no reason. When an insecure girl talks up her beauty, it’s her being strong and independent. When Asmo does it, its narcissism… it doesn’t really seem fair, now does it? Maybe he’s just an insecure person who needs to tell himself ALL THE TIME that he’s beautiful. That if he stares at his reflection long enough, he may see it too.

(Also, Simeon literally calls him out on being insecure. Insecure people tend to try and overcompensate where they feel they’re lacking.)

”Asmodeus is hinted to be insecure and seeking for love and attention. When Simeon was asked about what he thought of Asmodeus, he says that Asmodeus is still trying to fulfill the role of the angel he used to be; an angel that was adored and loved by many. Asmodeus laughs at Simeon's remark and brushes it off by saying that he is only jealous.” - A section from said Asmodeus Wiki.

People can choose to love or hate Asmo, obviously. Making things up about his character without having anything but speculation and having that dictate how he acts is plain silly. This entire “essay” if you can call it that, comes from the heart. I love Asmo as a character, and in the beginning he did make me uncomfortable, I didn’t like him that much. But I learned to look past that and figure out why he acts the way he does. Something didn’t sit right with me about him for a while, and it was that air of insecurity that I didn’t see at first.

All I can really ask for, is giving Asmo another chance as a character. He’s not as wild and wacky as Mammon, or as cool and sexy as Lucifer, or as edgy and precious as Belphie, but he matters in this story too. He fell from grace with his brothers for Lilith. Give him another chance, and let him show you that he is the Avatar of Love.

#obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me swd #om!#om! swd #om! asmo #om! asmodeus #obey me asmo #obey me asmodeus #Thanks for 400 followers!

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fortunatelyfresco · 4 years ago

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A Holistic Integration of Type 1 Narcolepsy into the Reading of Moist von Lipwig

Literary Interpretation, Disability, and Finding Yourself Between the Lines

As it goes, "I wrote this for me, but you can read it if you want." It might be a fun ride for anyone who is very interested in Moist von Lipwig, or narcolepsy, or both, and/or anyone who enjoys collecting small details from within a body of work and arranging them into threads that are supportable by the text, without being actually suggested by it.

Personally, I find it very interesting to read the meta behind different headcanons, and see how creators can unintentionally write a character who fits certain criteria. There are only so many traits, after all, and some of them tend to travel in groups! Humans are pattern seekers, etc etc.

The first step of reading Moist von Lipwig as narcoleptic is wanting to read Moist von Lipwig as narcoleptic. Being narcoleptic myself and relating heavily to Moist, this step was very easy. I invite you to take my hand and come along, at least briefly, if you were interested enough to click the readmore.

Once you have taken that step, things start falling into place. At least they do if you're intimately familiar with narcolepsy, or if you first learn about it in detail through, for instance, a Tumblr post with an agenda :)

I'll break this down symptom by symptom, citing only the ones I both have personal experience with and see textual support for.

I'll be using OverDrive's search function to catalogue "evidence" in (the American editions of) Going Postal, Making Money, and Raising Steam, so I might miss passages that don't use certain keywords.

Please take any statements along the lines of "being narcoleptic means X" with a huge grain of salt. Sometimes it's just more succinct. Narcolepsy can manifest in many different ways, and is still being actively studied. Don't base your entire understanding of it on a fandom essay I wrote to cope with the crushing pressures of capitalism. I have not even fully read the scientific studies linked here as sources.

Here we go! Spoilers abound.

I. Excessive Daytime Sleepiness (EDS) and sleep attacks.

Being narcoleptic means (salt now, please) that your brain does not get adequate rest while you sleep, no matter how much you sleep. This is because of a disturbance in the order and length of REM and NREM sleep phases. This leads to constant exhaustion. Some sources describe narcoleptic EDS as "comparable to [the sleepiness] experienced by a healthy individual who has been sleep-deprived continuously for 48–72 hours."

(Source.)

Sleep attacks can come on gradually or suddenly. In my case, I become irritable and easily overwhelmed, and nothing matters except finding a place to lie down. A more severe attack, under the right circumstances, can put me to sleep while I'm actively trying to stay awake and engaged.

Moist refers to 6:45 am as "still nighttime." He is "allergic to the concept of two seven o'clocks in one day" and is "not good at early mornings," and the narration even cites this as "one of the advantages of a life of crime; you didn't have to get up until other people had got the streets aired."

In Going Postal, he repeatedly falls asleep at his desk. I can only find two instances, but the first one describes it as having happened "again," so it happens at least three times over the course of one week. Both of the times I found were after Mr. Pump cleared his apartment, giving him access to a bed, and I can't find any reference to the fire destroying it—just that his office is "missing the whole of one wall." His presumably wooden desk is still intact, even, just "charred."

There's also no build-up either time. No direct narration of the time right before he falls asleep, just retroactive accounting for it.

Which is primarily a function of stories not showing us every boring second, and secondarily one of the smaller ways we're shown Moist being overwhelmed and racing to keep up with himself, but tertiarily it's a great set dressing if you've already decided he's narcoleptic. Sometimes sleep is just a thing that happens, without any deliberate transition. Sometimes you sit down to catch your breath or get some paperwork done, and wake up several hours later.

I've found only one example in GP of Moist waking up in his actual bed at the post office: the morning after being possessed by all the undelivered letters. Presumably either they put him there, or Mr. Pump did.

There are two points in Making Money where Moist, in an effort to be a comforting and/or guiding hand, advises people to get some sleep. First Owlswick Jenkins, and then one of the clerks (Robert) who is worried about Mr. Bent.

I take the optimistic view that this is Moist genuinely caring about these people, not just trying to get them to do what he wants. He has always done some combination of those things (GP opens with him having befriended his jailers, after all), but there's definitely a thread of him learning to treat both himself and those around him more like real people. (See also.)

Looking at this thread through narcolepsy-colored lenses, you get Moist perhaps drawing from his own experiences in an effort to be helpful. In Owlswick or Robert's position, what is something he would want to hear from the man currently in charge of his fate, or at least his job? "Get some sleep."

If we accept this as a pattern, it culminates in Raising Steam, when Moist starts to worry about "Dick Simnel and his band of overworked engineers," fixating particularly on their lack of sleep.

What sleep they got was in sleeping bags, curled up on carriage seats, eating but not eating well, just driven by their watches and their desire to keep the train going.

[...]

"People are going to die if we push them any further," he said to Dick. "You lot would rather work than sleep!"

[...]

The young man swayed in front of him and Moist's tone became gentle. "And I see now that part of my job is to tell you that you need some rest. You've run out of steam, Dick. Look, we're well on the way to Uberwald now, and while it's daylight and we're out of the mountains it's going to be the least risky time to run with minimum crew. We're all going to need our wits about us when we get near the pass. Surely you can take some rest?"

Simnel blinked as if he'd not seen Moist the first time, and said, "Yes, you're right."

And Moist could hear the slurring in the young man's speech, caught him before he fell and dragged him into a sleeping compartment, put him to bed, and noted that the engineer didn't so much fall asleep as somehow flow into it.

Moist then recruits Vimes to help him talk the rest of the engineers into getting some rest. The two of them briefly commiserate about people not realizing how important it is.

"I have to teach that to young coppers. Treasure a night's rest, I always say. Take a nap whenever you can."

"Very good."

II. Insomnia.

This is a lesser-known but very common symptom of narcolepsy. Or a comorbidity, depending on how you look at it. It seems counterintuitive if narcolepsy has been presented to you as "sleeping all the time," but it makes sense once you know it's really a matter of disruption in the brain's ability to regulate sleep cycles.

The case for this symptom is flimsier, and I fully admit I'm just reading my own experience into it. But here are two excerpts from Going Postal that I find quite suitable for my sleepy agenda:

1. "A man of affairs such as he had to learn to sleep in all kinds of situations, often while mobs were looking for him a wall's thickness away."

I latched hard onto this detail the first time I read GP.

At my worst, I could not get more than a couple hours of sleep in my bed. I kept taking naps in the bath because it was one of the few places I could sleep. It seemed to fulfill some of the criteria (isolation, temperature control, etc) that my brain demanded in exchange for playing nice.

We're told over and over again, throughout Moist's books, that he functions best under pressure.

(Brief aside: This is often cited as a reason to interpret Moist as having ADHD, which I'm also fully on board with. Not coincidentally, narcolepsy and ADHD share a few symptoms, have a notable comorbidity rate, and are treated with some of the same medications. Source.)

So again, if you're already inclined to read Moist as narcoleptic, the following is an easy jump:

"Moist thinks he's good at sleeping in strange places under strange circumstances. This is because A) his basis for comparison is a disordered attempt to sleep in normal places under normal circumstances, B) something about danger satisfies his brain into running more smoothly, and C) he's a resourceful person who is 'not given to introspection,' and so is less likely to wonder why his body demands sleep at strange times and more likely to focus on finding a place for that sleep to happen, and chalk this up later as a skill."

And returning briefly to EDS: Why would someone like Moist waste time finding a safe place to sleep while people are actively trying to kill him? At the beginning of GP, he leaves Vetinari's office and immediately goes on the run. In multiple books, when he feels threatened, his brain instinctively launches into complex escape plans. We see him successfully blend into an Ankh-Morpork crowd at least once after becoming a public figure.

So why bother? After all, a safe place to sleep is also a safe place to change clothes, or at least remove whatever distinguishing features he's given himself. Why wouldn't he just become someone else and leave town immediately?

The obvious answer is that sometimes things just happen, and an author doesn't need to know or explain every single detail of a character's past.

I would suggest, though, that one of those things might be Moist reaching a point where sleep is just not optional. A point where he not only doesn't, but can't, care about anything else. Where he is too tired to think straight, too tired to talk his way out of trouble, too tired to even contemplate the long journey from one town to the next.

2. "Moist knew he ought to get some sleep, but he had to be there, too, alive and sparkling."

Sometimes (especially in combination with underlying mental health issues) narcoleptic sleep deprivation can bypass everything I've described so far, and lead straight into a manic state. You won't necessarily find that on Google, but it's been my experience.

That's obviously not what the text is implying. "Alive and sparkling" is just a very relatable description. And we do often see Moist getting away from himself, speaking without thinking, making absurd promises that he justifies immediately afterwards as Just Part Of Being Him, always raising the stakes.

And here are a couple of excerpts from Raising Steam that could be interpreted as Moist being a light sleeper, AKA struggling to get deep sleep:

1. "And slowly Moist shut down, although a part of him was always listening to the rhythm of the rails, listening in his sleep, like a sailor listening to the sounds of the sea."

2. "All Moist's life he'd managed to find a way of sleeping in just about every circumstance and, besides, the guard's van was somehow the hub of the train; and although he didn't know how he did it, he always managed to sleep with half of one ear open."

Moist is exactly the kind of opportunist to see that as a useful tool, isn't he?

III. Hypnagogic and Hypnopompic Hallucinations.

These are hallucinations that come on as you're falling asleep or waking up. They can also happen during REM intrusions while you're awake. My most memorable ones include piano notes, someone calling my name, being trapped in the waves of a large body of water, and a huge truck going over a guard rail and tumbling down a hill. These are often, but not always, accompanied by sleep paralysis (and sleep paralysis is often, but not always, accompanied by hallucinations).

In GP, Moist casually cites his own hallucinations as proof that what is happening at the post office is not one.

"They're all alive! And angry! They talk! It was not a hallucination! I've had hallucinations and they don't hurt!"

Obviously that's not true for everyone, but it's true for Moist, and he has enough experience that he immediately recognizes the difference.

At one point while awake, Moist "[snaps] out of a dream of chandeliers" to realize someone has approached him to talk, while he was busy having visions of what the post office used to look like/could look like again.

Now, that's cheating, because we're probably supposed to assume it's a side effect of being possessed, but... I'm putting it here anyway.

There is also perhaps a case to be made for the tendency of Moist's internal monologue to lapse into extremely specific and prolonged hypotheticals. The lines between hallucinations, waking dreams, and "regular" daydreams have always been very blurry to me. I'm especially curious about the example at the end of Going Postal, which goes like this:

"Look, I know what I'm like," he said. "I'm not the person everyone thinks I am. I just wanted to prove to myself I'm not like Gilt. More than a hammer, you understand? But I'm still a fraud by trade. I thought you knew that. I can fake sincerity so well that even I can't tell. I mess with people's heads—"

"You're fooling no one but yourself," said Miss Dearheart, and reached for his hand.

Moist shook her off, and ran out of the building, out of the city, and back to his old life, or lives, always moving on, selling glass as diamond, but somehow it just didn't seem to work anymore, the flair wasn't there, the fun had dropped out of it, even the cards didn't seem to work for him, the money ran out, and one winter in some inn that was no more than a slum he turned his face to the wall—

And an angel appeared.

"What just happened?" said Miss Dearheart.

Perhaps you do get two...

"Only a passing thought," said Moist.

In-universe... what is Adora reacting to? What did just happen? The fact that these incidents are not isolated to Going Postal is a point against it being some sort of literal timeline divergence caused by The Spirit Of The Post.

So maybe Moist visibly zoned out. Maybe he had some kind of minor but noticeable cataplexy attack (more on those later) as part of a REM intrusion, brought on by the intense emotions he's currently struggling with.

IV. Vivid Dreams.

Again, at least some of this is probably supposed to be part of the possession, but I've been professionally projecting myself onto the surreal dreams of magically afflicted characters for years. Do try this at home.

1. "Moist dreamed of bottled wizards, all shouting his name. In the best tradition of awaking from a nightmare, the voices gradually became one voice, which turned out to be the voice of Mr. Pump, who was shaking him."

2. Moist is uneasy about the Smoking Gnu's plan, and then he has an extremely detailed dream about the Grand Trunk burning down.

This culminates in "Moist awoke, the Grand Trunk burning in his head," followed by a paragraph of him thinking things through and starting to form his own alternative plan, followed immediately by "Moist awoke. He was at his desk, and someone had put a pillow under his head."

So he fell asleep at his desk, woke up from a vivid nightmare, was awake just long enough for a coherent train of thought, and then passed back out. Which once again is not "proof" of anything, but fits the predetermined interpretation like a glove.

V. Cataplexy.

Cataplexy is a sudden loss of muscle control, usually triggered by strong emotions. This is thought to be a facet of REM intrusion—waking instances of the atonia that is meant to stop us from acting out our dreams.

The most well-known manifestation is laughter making your knees buckle, but it's not always that severe. My own attacks range from facial twitching, usually when I'm angry or otherwise extremely upset, to all-over weakness/immobilization and near-collapse when I laugh. My knees have fully buckled once or twice.

This is the biggest stretch. This is the one that is absolutely only there if you've already decided to read entire novels between the lines. It's also not even necessary for the broader headcanon; plenty of people have narcolepsy without cataplexy (or such mild cataplexy that it's never noticeable, or very delayed onset, etc).

However. I am doing this for fun. So I want him to have it. It's also become a major part of how I imagine Moist engaging with emotion, and I'd like to make a case for that.

There are a few scattered references to Moist's legs shaking, or being unsteady, or outright giving way, but there's usually an external physical reason, and/or enough psychological shock to justify it without a medical condition.

The most compelling example I've found so far comes from Moist and Adora's conversation about people expecting Moist to deliver letters to the gods.

"I never promised to—"

"You promised to when you sold them the stamps!"

Moist almost fell off his chair. She'd wielded the sentence like a fist.

"And it'll give them hope," she added, rather more quietly.

"False hope," said Moist, struggling upright.

"Almost fell off his chair" at first sounds like casual hyperbole, but then "struggling upright" implies it was a bit more literal. It's also an accurate description of me recovering from my more severe attacks, supporting myself on a wall or my spouse, or pushing myself up if I've fallen over in bed.

That happens to me multiple times per day, by the way. It doesn't bother me, and I didn't realize there was anything unusual about it for a long time. I barely think about it, except to fondly note that my spouse is good at making me laugh.

Which is to say, even severe cataplexy is not always noticeable or debilitating. Sometimes it absolutely is! It can be downright dangerous, depending on where you are, what you're doing, and whether you have any other conditions it might exacerbate. I don't want to undermine that.

I am just hell-bent on justifying the idea that this fictional character could have repeated attacks throughout the canonical narrative that are so routine they don't merit an explanation, or even a description. Especially for someone who is used to hiding his few distinguishing features behind false ones that are much more memorable. (See also.)

(That link goes to my own fanfic. Sorry.)

On the milder side, between Going Postal and Making Money, there are three instances of Moist's mouth "dropping open" when he's shocked, upset, confused, or some combination of the three. This is the kind of thing that shows up a lot in fiction, but rarely happens so literally in real life.

(There's technically a fourth instance, but I'm not counting it because it seems to be a deliberate choice on his part to convey surprise.)

And then there's laughter. Or rather, there isn't. I could be missing something, but I've searched all three books for instances of laughter and various synonyms (not counting spoken "Ha!"s), and what I've come up with is:

Moist laughs once in Going Postal, when he receives the assignment for the race to Genua.

Two packages were handed over. Moist undid his, and burst out laughing.

There's also an instance earlier in the book where Moist nearly "burst[s] out laughing."

I find the specifics here interesting, and, for our purposes, fortuitous. Cataplexy is complicated and presents differently for everyone. In my case, when laughter triggers an attack, one of the effects (which is sometimes also a cause) is that I laugh very hard, with little or no control. "Burst out laughing" is quite apt.

Let's move on to Making Money, and start with a quick tangent:

Mr. Bent explains that he has no sense of humor due to a medical condition, and that he isn't upset about this and doesn't understand why people feel sorry for him.

Moist immediately starts in with "Have you tried—" before getting cut off by the frustrated Bent.

Out-of-universe, "Have you tried" is such a well-known refrain to anyone with an incurable condition, I'm not at all surprised to find it in a book written by someone who had at least begun the process that would lead to a diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer's. And Pratchett has certainly never shied away from portraying ignorance in his protagonists.

In-universe, it feels a little odd. Moist's tongue runs away from him all the time, but usually in the form of making ridiculous claims or impossible promises. Moist's entire stock-in-trade is People Skills, and it feels strange for him to make this kind of mistake immediately after being told Mr. Bent is not looking for solutions.

But if one were reading with, for instance, the idea in mind that Moist himself has an incurable condition related to laughter and is enthusiastic about, but still relatively new to, the practice of drawing on his own experiences to help people... it is easy to imagine the gears in his head turning the wrong way, superimposing those experiences over the tail end of Mr. Bent's explanation. Disabled people are not immune to these well-meaning pitfalls.

There is another Mr. Bent moment that I want to discuss, but we'll circle back around to it later.

I found two instances of Moist himself laughing in MM.

1. "He said it with a laugh, to lighten the mood a little."

This is deliberate laughter, employed as a social tactic. A polite chuckle, probably. Not the sort of thing that generally triggers cataplexy.

2. "Moist started to laugh, and stopped at the sight of her grave expression."

The first and only involuntary laugh in MM. It doesn't always trigger attacks...

Which brings us to Raising Steam. Compared to the first two books, Moist laughs a lot here. I count nine instances. Two of them are "burst out laughing"s, a couple include him as part of a group, some of it comes off as deliberate, and some of it doesn't.

I've always seen a lot of... rage in Raising Steam. Combing through it for laughter, I realized Moist's emotions in general are much closer to the surface here, and he's much less concerned about letting people see them. He laughs with friends and acquaintances, he cries in front of strangers, he shouts at Harry King, he has that entire conversation with Dick that boils down to "I'm very worried about you," etc.

Opinions vary wildly and sharply on Raising Steam. I have my own hangups with it, as I do with most books in the series. (Every time I make a new Discworld post, Tumblr passive-aggressively suggests the tag "my kingdom for a discworld character who is normal about women and other species.")

But I like this particular change in Moist, and I choose to see it as character development. He's trading in the professional detachment of a conman for the ability to grow into himself as a person and make meaningful connections.

So, what does that have to do with cataplexy? A lot.

I don't want to get too maudlin, so I'll just say I have plenty of personal experience with emotional repression masking cataplexy symptoms. And so, I believe, does the version of Moist we've put together over the course of this post.

Which brings us back to Making Money, and Mr. Bent. He says something about Moist that I find very interesting: "I do not trust those who laugh too easily."

Unless I've missed something, at that point in the book, Moist has never actually laughed in front of him. And Mr. Bent is a man who pays very close attention to details.

So, what is the in-universe explanation for this? I'd like to propose that Moist is very skilled at seeming to laugh, without actually laughing. He smiles, he's friendly, and he makes other people laugh, which is another thing Bent dislikes about him. He gives the impression of being someone who laughs a lot. (He certainly left that impression on me; I was very surprised by the lack of examples in the first two books.)

Even staying strictly within the bounds of canon, it's easy to imagine why this might have become part of Moist's camouflage in his previous life. He wasn't looking to get attached to anyone, and he didn't want anyone getting inside his head. Engaging with people genuinely enough to laugh at their jokes would run counter to both of those things, but some of his personas still needed to come off as friendly and sociable.

Still working within the canon, it makes sense to assume he's similarly distanced himself from emotion in general. He sits in a cell for several weeks without truly believing he's going to die. He's bewildered when Mr. Pump points out that his schemes have hurt innocent people. He has no idea what to do with his feelings for Adora. Etc.

Interpreting Moist as having cataplexy adds an extra element of danger. Moist thrives on danger, but there's a difference between the thrill of a con and the threat of sudden, uncontrollable displays of vulnerability. And so it becomes even easier to see him stifling his own emotional capacity.*

We meet Moist at a moment of great upheaval. He is forcibly removed from his cocoon of false identities, and pushed out into the world as himself. And we are shown and told throughout Going Postal that he does not know how to be himself. (See also.)

He is repeatedly stymied by his own emotions. He gets tongue-tied and confused around Adora, he snaps at Mr. Pump, he lashes out at Mr. Groat, he gets lost in school flashbacks when he meets Miss Maccalariat. This thread continues in Making Money, where the sudden reappearance of Cribbins immediately rattles him into making an uncharacteristic mistake.

I called him Cribbins! Just then! I called him Cribbins! Did he tell me his name? Did he notice? He must have noticed!

Later in the same book, Moist misses a crucial opportunity to run damage control on the bank's public image... because he's excited to see Adora.

The Moist of GP and MM is not used to feeling things so deeply. It throws him off his game. I'm not at all suggesting cataplexy is the only (or even primary) reason for that, but I do think there's room for it on both sides of the cause and effect equation.

With or without the cataplexy, I find Moist's relative emotional openness in Raising Steam... really nice. (It's a work in progress. He's still getting a handle on anger.)

Cataplexy just adds another dimension. A physical manifestation of emotional vulnerability, which would have been especially untenable for a teenager on the run. Just one more facet of the real, human, fallible Moist von Lipwig who spent years buried beneath Albert Spangler and all the rest.

Another piece of himself that Moist is growing to understand and accept, as he learns to more comfortably be himself.

The Moist of Going Postal runs into a burning building to save lives without fully understanding why he wants to, and justifies it on the fly as an essential part of the role he's trying to play.

The Moist of Raising Steam mindlessly throws himself under a train to save two children, and then blows up at Harry King about the lack of safety regulations. Freshly traumatized by the murder of several railway workers and his own violent, vengeful response to it, he still offers, in the face of Harry's own grief, to be the one to inform their families. On a long and dangerous journey with plenty of moving parts to think about, he worries about Dick Simnel and the other engineers, and pushes them to take better care of themselves.

He also meets a bunch of kids who nearly derailed a train as part of a childish scheme. His admonishment is startlingly vivid.

"Can you imagine a railway accident? The screaming of the rails and the people inside and the explosion that scythes the countryside around when the boiler bursts? And you, little girl, and your little friends, would have done all that. Killed a trainload of people."

[...]

"I'll square this with the engine driver, but if I was you I'd get my pencil and turn any clever ideas you have like this into a book or two. Those penny dreadfuls are all the rage in the railway bookshops."

Maybe what he is also saying, between the lines, is:

I left home at 14 and began a life of smoke and mirrors. I was empty inside, and I thought everyone else was, too. It was all fun and games, and then a man made of clay told me I was killing people. Nip it in the bud, child. Write books.

------------

*There are studies suggesting that in addition to deliberately employed "tricks," people with cataplexy may experience physiological reactions in the brain meant to inhibit laughter. (Source 1, Source 2.)

Most of the information here is way over my head, but that second link also says "one region of the brain called the zona incerta (meaning 'zone of uncertainty') was only activated during laughter in people with narcolepsy, not in controls. Research on the zona incerta in animals suggests that it also helps to control fear-associated behavior."

The linked article about that (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-03581-6) is also over my head, but I would certainly describe Moist von Lipwig as having unusual fear responses.**

**Narcolepsy is a fun roller-coaster ride of constant scientific discoveries about exactly which parts of your brain are paying too much attention, not paying enough attention, or trying to eat each other.

#moist von lipwig #narcolepsy #discworld #disabled headcanons #oh my god this got so out of hand #earned itself a title AND a subtitle #mr. cybulskis i'm sorry i fell asleep in your class every day it was at the exact wrong time and temperature and lighting

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probably-haven · 3 years ago

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Hello!

So I’m the anon who asked for more Archon War Venti headcanons and I just loved it! I really like reading your headcanons cuz some of them are similar to mine but mostly are headcanons that I didn’t think of so it really is nice to read and see your thoughts about Venti!

I feel like as if I’m asking too much but could you keep doing these types of headcanons? Like it doesn’t have to be Archon War headcanons but like some headcanons about Venti’s relationship with the Ragnvindrs and Gunnhildrs. Because the first Gunnhildr was the first one who prayed to Barbatos and the first Ragnvindr was his friend who left but came back and I really wanna hear your thoughts on that!

And I’ve decided to get off anon cuz you just replied to my texts and I wasn’t expecting that so I’ve got a short confidence boost that I am completely taking advantage of! And thanks for the advice! or uhh comment? observation? I’m not entirely sure but thank you for that! I’ve heard that be said to me a few times and I have been trying to be more, uhh, assertive so thanks for that!

rfouierjkhfkecs i actually came across information on Gunnhildr and the "Red-haired warrior" yesterday when i was doing more research into the rebellion against Decarabian and I was like "wow this would be really fucking fun to research and theorize on, but its too specific/niche to include unprompted no matter how much i want to" but bestie you prompted, and im literally so happy right now because I didn't think I'd ever really get the chance to post about them!

also lmao yeah, i tend to try and reply to as much as I can, since it's a good feeling when someone does and all. but yeah, no problem! I’m glad you felt confident enough to reveal XD.

This may be structured a bit more like analysis/theory/just citing canon things at first before it gets into a more headcanony format.

ehe i have so much free reign on this it's lovely

More Archon War Era Venti: one two three

spoilers for Venti's backstory and Diluc's(kinda, i think, just in case)

first things first, laying down some canon background because before yesterday i hadn't heard of either of them outside of that one cutscene.

the very reason Decarabian had his storm wall up in the first place was because at the time Andrius had declared war on him- and his tower, and the city of Mondstadt by extent, were basically constantly under attack by Andrius's blizzards, which since he was still alive back then, were a lot bigger and covered basically what seems to be the whole of Mondstadt outside the barrier.

This meant that people had two options. Live in the city under Decarabian's oppression, or live outside the barrier, and brave the blizzards of a warring god... which was not a good idea

but the Gunnhildr clan(not yet called that) tried- and they almost died because of it. In the midst of a blizzard, the clan chief's daughter, named Gunnhildr(which the clan would be named after later) sent out a prayer that was heard by a wandering wind spirit. And the faith of that prayer gave the spirit enough power to create a small shelter to protect them.

When her father past, she became the new leader and also a priestess. She would later lead the clan to fight Decarabian alongside four others. And basically the Gunnhildr Clan ended up as like sworn protectors of Mondstadt

as for the red-haired warrior, who is basically assumed to be the earliest known ancestor of the Ragnvindir clan(im gonna refer to as Ragnvindir for convenience sake, even though "Ragnvindir" is technically a different character from Vanessa's era)theres not much information on him, but heres what i have from the various wiki's

- he was a wanderer

- one of the first to use the sign of windblume to find other rebels(so he's intelligent)

- actively propped up the nameless bard so he could watch as the tower was destroyed

there's this little tidbit too from the Windblume Ode bow's description that im probably gonna talk about a considerable amount too: "Atop the ruins of the ancient tower, amidst the cheers, songs, and tears of those who had newly won their freedom. A red-haired warrior turned his back on the newborn god, hidden like a single raindrop in a tidal wave of humanity. He was first among those who passed the secret sign of Windblume, the one who wove threads of dawn throughout the long night. His name has since been lost to time, but his deeds are still remembered in song." followed later by "The fate of this clan will likely never change: they shall ever live in the darkness and bring forth the flame of dawn."

Now I'm going to start with the Ragnvindir(geez, why's it spelled like that tho)

My idea of his character is basically formed by a mix of Ragnvindir stereotypes and just generally analyzing text.

So what do we know about Ragnvindir's for sure? they are shady motherfuckers- or at least they rarely operate in the spotlight. also damn, these guys are more cursed than anemo vision wielders- like the only one who didn't canonically lose someone close to them was Crepus, but considering that Diluc doesn't exactly have a mom..... he probably did

so what do we know? - he was close with the nameless bard - he was intelligent - he likely operated primarily from the shadows "ever living in the darkness" - he was a wanderer - he abandoned Venti during the celebration - but his deeds were still remembered in song, so Venti and him were likely still close

now the question of the century: how will i choose to interpret "turned his back on the newborn god"? And honestly, I'm- not sure- at first i assumed he abandoned him completely- but Venti did still make sure to carry on his memory- which could just be Venti being Venti, but for the sake of sanity, this is how I'm interpreting it.

A lot of things happened to the Ragnvindir that day. He lost a friend, saw another become a god to replace the one they had conquered, and he saw his goal, his reason for being in Mondstadt, come to fruition. "see the world through my eyes" the bard had said, and the Ragnvindir had been a wanderer even before. Sure, the people had won freedom, and that was to be celebrated, but he's intelligent to recognize that people would likely see him as one of the key figures in leading the rebellion. And for him this was a solemn time, and ending to a chapter, and not being one to operate in the spotlight, the last thing he'd want is to be swept up in festivities and attention at a time like this.

It also likely didn't help that he's probably smart enough to understand the idea of "power corrupts," and seeing the wind sprite just readily accept the mantle of Archon was likely not the most comforting thing to happen in the given situation after all. But Decarabian was gone, and Andrius had ceased his blizzards, so without a word, he slipped into the crowd and left, a wanderer once more.

now back to Gunnhildr

she was the first to receive an anemo vision from Barbatos, no I do not take criticism on this "the power bestowed on her by Barbatos" like please, they basically said it.

It also mentions that she crowned Venti with laurels(symbol of vistory) after the battle- the book Biography of Gunnhildr additionally says "the Gunnhildr Clan will continue honoring the legacy of its ancestors and its duty to the Anemo Archon: to protect Mondstadt, the land and all who inhabit it, forever."

I really like this because it conveniently ties into my past headcanon about Venti granting visions to the people of Mondstadt and having them be the ones to erect wind barriers and defend the city in his absence.

So in the Archon War I like to imagine that the Gunnhildr clan had a lot of people who were actually granted visions and were basically in charge of protecting it from those who would attempt to ambush them.

Mondstadt essentially became known for this- the fact that the mortals within it were strong enough to fend off the force of a god without support from their own.

but regardless, Gunnhildr, as she had before, served as a priestess to Barbatos, the closest thing that Mondstadt had to a ruler, and yet she only took charge of prayer and protection.... i hate to just- equate them to their descendants- but to an extent- her role was kind of like a merge between Jean and Barbara- Except with a whole lot less structure.... i really dont want their characters to just be carbon copies of the descendants but- c'mon, the comparison was right there.

anyways besties- back to Venti so i can tie them in

The Archon War was one of the worst times for Venti in his entire life thus far. And the time immediately after Decarbian's fall, while Gunnhildr and the Ragnvindir were still alive, was the key period of time in which things could have gone very differently.

Venti is the god of freedom. That's a reoccurring theme and I think I've made that abundantly clear. But during this time, Venti was anything but free.

I've mentioned before how he would stay far from the city of Mondstadt so the shockwave of his death wouldn't reach him, should he fall.... well- Venti is new to a lot of things- godhood- humanity- war- freedom- and at this point he was trying hard to figure out how to be Mondstadt's god without becoming Decarabian, and while still being able to survive, and make sure they survived, and see the world for his friend, and carry on his friends legacy.

And this is a lot of stuff for what was once a carefree elemental being, and there were certain things that had to be done for this to happen. He couldn't just stay in Mondstadt, or he would grow weak and his people would be vulnerable to attack, but he couldn't abandon it, because despite being able to fend for themselves, there's always hat just in case. He couldn't stay in any one place outside of Mondstadt for very long or he'd be found and killed. He knew in order for Mondstadt to survive he would have to take an active role in the war, strengthen himself so he could defend Mondstadt, and thats exactly what he did.

He started by going after the less powerful gods, ones he had a chance at beating with the power he got from the Gunnhildr clan and the rest of Mond, and by wiping them out, he would grow stronger, so he kept it up- working his way up the metaphorical ladder.

but he couldn't let anyone near him either, because he knew just what would happen if he was attacked then. Were it not for Gunnhildr's prayer, the early years of the Archon War would have been without contest the loneliest time of his life, and there would be nothing he could do about it, bound by survival and his attachment to the legacy of his friend, constantly fearing for his life and going against his very nature as the god of freedom. Frankly thrust into that circumstance that early on, and having to face it alone, it's likely that Venti would have caved under the pressure and dropped his attachment to either his survival, or to his friends legacy... or just something entirely worse(isolation messes with brains) so I'm attributing the fact that he didn't do that to Gunnhildr's companionship, speaking to him and guiding him through it as he had guided her through the blizzard some time ago.

I also like to think that she's responsible for founding at least a number of the different celebrations that still happen in Mondstadt even now.

Ugh supportive warrior priestess- we stan

anyway meanwhile! we got the Ragnvindir

He hears about Venti taking part in the Archon war during his wanderings and returns to Mondstadt to check in, wary of what he might find.

Venti, who hadn't seen him since the rebellion, is elated to say the least and they do a bit of catching up because they need it

and then the conversation turns more serious, and the Ragnvindir brings up a third thing that Venti needs to hold onto- his humanity.

See, in the early years, just desperate to get a foothold on the world, Venti's first number of targets were just indiscriminately going after those he knew to be weaker than him, and the Ragnvindir points this out, saying that while it's not necessarily bad, if he keeps doing it, it won't be long until he causes his and, by extent, Mondstadt's legacy to be tainted by a reputation for slaughter, no better than any of the other bloodthirsty gods that frequented the war's fields. "Think of what the bard would do, we were both close enough to do that much"

And Venti becomes yet more caged, but recognizes that he's right, and this is another turning point, that in the coming years would keep Venti from losing himself.

also- Gunnhildr, Venti having told her about the Ragnvindir's concerns that he now shared, probably organized some kind of event (not unlike the right of part, but also, yes unlike it) that was deliberately intended and designs to serve as an excuse that Venti could chose to take to visit Mondstadt, something she know he desperately wanted to do, but wouldn't allow himself for fear of putting them in danger. But if she made it an official celebration, then it would give Venti the opportunity to visit his people again, under the guise of it being a responsibility, not having to deal with the moral implications of doing so at a time when he was already dealing with enough of those already.

Also on his travels, the Ragnvindir probably started and spread a number of rumors that could end up working in Venti's favor, not that anyone ever knew it was him of course.

basically Gunnhildr protected the people of Mondstadt and did all she could to keep everyone in as high spirits as possible, Venti included.

And as for the Ragnvindir, he took a more realistic approach, traveling and getting venti followers in far places, spreading false information about him, and just overall making sure that Venti didn't do things he'd regret.

And when they died, Venti would carry their legacy with him as well, not losing his humanity to the tide of war as he very nearly had(though he still often came close), and trying to spreading high spirits where ever he could without fail.

#genshin impact #genshin venti #genshin impact headcanons #genshin theory #genshin headcanons #archon war era venti #genshin barbatos #genshin decarabian #nameless bard #genshin ragnvindir #genshin gunnhildr #genshin lore #genshin spoilers #spoilers #angst #venti angst #archon war #old mondstadt

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