#the greek coffin mystery

[intergalacticsouvenirs]

From Romans to Rectums: Thoughts on the Naming Convention in Mad Max

I think it’s fascinating how that meme about how often men think about the roman empire is materialized in the mad max world in different forms, but especially in their bastardized-latin naming convention. In my mind, it appears that post apocalyptic warlords were aware that modern society looked up to the roman empire, but they didn’t quite understand how the romans influenced us exactly. Nevertheless, the warlords (or their history men) did have access to niche knowledge such as ancient roman military strategy, enough to inspire the imperator and praetorian warrior position names. It’s as if the first history men did not keep any pre modern history on their skins, so they had to reduce the entire roman empire into fragments of ideals (for oral tradition). Such fragments of ideals would combine in weird ways to inspire these war-men to write the most beautifully grotesque poems that are their names.

In a world where words have more power, names are more than just biographical micro-poems, they are multi-used as tools as well. They could be guns pointed to your face like “People Eater” and “Toe-Cutter”, a quality seal of approval on a product like “Capable” and “Splendid”, an aggressive dog warning sign like “Furiosa” and “Mad Max”, and even a prayer amulet as in “Corpus Colossus”.

As a trend among warlords, a wacky wrestling stage name is a must for a strong branding. After all, the ferocious marketing of late capitalism and show business did not die with the atomic bomb, but rather thrived, mutated, and embraced nature, believe it or not. Darwin’s nature, not you tree-huggers’ nature.

The names of the two capable immortan brothers Rictus Erectus and Scabrous Scrotus reveal the real underlying obsession of all men: the penis. The penis is the axis mundi around which all revolves in the (mad max) world. But more than just about sex, the penis cult is about finding strength and courage in a hypermasculine god to mentally survive in a hypermasculine hell. In this context, the names of Immortan Joe's sons take on a deeper significance. Firstly, Rictus Erectus translates to something like grin and erection, as if Immortan Joe had hopped for a future full of pleasures for his son. It is also a very verbal wish for an offspring who can physically stand up by himself and for himself. Unlike his disabled brother Corpus Colossus, who received a magnificent name meaning body like a giant greek god statue, in fruitless hopes that his imperfections would also grow away. Scabrous Scrotus more explicitly describes a unique physical attribute, namely some scabby nuts. Scrotus could very well be a nickname, which would parallel ancient romans who would choose a cognomen (nickname) to be known by, like Caligula meaning “little boot”, Oedipus (greek) meaning “swollen foot”, and Verrucosus meaning “warty”, for example. Better would be if Joe had named his son after his own beat-up ballsack, in which case this ode to biological reproduction against the environment would be very on brand. I bet Darwin is grinning wide, in his coffin.

It is interesting to note that most people in the recent mad max world appear to be illiterate and uncultured, so most don’t even understand the meaning of these stupid Latin names, but just that they sound as important as they say they are. That means these men who have access to nuance are really “dressing up” for each other, like an internal joke with the bois. Three brothers named to sound like roman emperors, to rule over all the erected men, by his mighty phallus.

It goes to show how colossal and monumental… the roman empire was, that it would outlast even the best of modernity. And its shadow would still loom over humans like the mysterious milky way in the night sky.

It’s a shame that Miller’s hyper-poetry is not that accessible.

[depression-napping]

Vincent’s Rebirth Bio

(This is the paragraph on the bottom of his profile page next to his cape)

暗い屋敷の地下に眠る謎多き男

The mysterious man who sleeps in the basement of a gloomy mansion

神羅屋敷地下の一室に棲まう、警備員自称する男。研究室のロックを解除する権限を持つようだが、ふだんは棺桶のなかでね眠りについており、必要最低限の対応しか行かわない。

元タークスという記録が神羅の端末に残されているほか、かつては研究者の護衛役として神羅屋敷に滞在していたと語るものの、それ以外の素性はほとんど謎。セフィロスと何らかの因縁があるらしく、クラウドたちがセフィロスを追っていると知り、彼らに同行する。

Dwelling in a single room in the basement of the Shinra Mansion is a man who calls himself a security guard.* He seems to have the authority to unlock the laboratory, however, usually he just sleeps in a coffin, and doesn’t do anything more than required beyond the bare minimum.

Records left on Shinra’s computer terminal state that he is a former Turk, and he has mentioned that in the past he used to serve as a bodyguard for Shinra researchers, but other than that, the rest of his identity remains a mystery. He seems to have some kind of connection to Sephiroth, and once he learns that Cloud’s team is pursuing Sephiroth, he decides to travel along with them.

~

(*Ok I am dumb this just hit me like a ton of bricks. “Security guard” that guards the entrance to hell? In Greek mythology, that’s Cerberus. They are not being subtle about this at ALL. Amazing.)

(This is purely conjecture, but. Are the first three monsters like the heads of Cerberus, and Chaos = Hell? And this explains why his ultimate weapon is actually Death Penalty and not Cerberus. Guyysssss the devs thought this THROUGH.)

[grimmyweek]

Grimmy Week 2024 Prompt Schedule

Hello Sunshines! 🌻

This Halloween Season, get ready to encounter ghosts, get a good scare, and explore the thrill of this spooky week 👻 From October 25, 2024 to October 31, 2024, Grimmy Week 2024 will be celebrated!

This is our ode to A Date With Death, and our beloved Grim Reaper.

For creators who want to partake in the event, see the SFW and NSFW Daily Prompts for the week below 👀 Please be sure to read our Guidelines and FAQs as well!

Guidelines & FAQs | Twitter | Navigation

SFW Prompt Schedule

Day 1 - Soulbabies ✦ Red String of Fate ✦ Azrael Day 2 - Fashion AU ✦ Cosplay ✦ Bodyswap Day 3 - Idol AU ✦ Crossover ✦ Actor AU Day 4 - Baking ✦ Pumpkins/Pumpkin Carving ✦ Couple Costumes Day 5 - Coffins ✦ Royalty AU ✦ Vampire AU Day 6 - Mystical Creatures ✦ Demons/Devils ✦ Greek Mythology Day 7 - Murder Mystery ✦ Haunted House/Escape Room ✦ Horror Movie Night

NSFW (18+) Prompt Schedule

Day 1 - Public ✦ Bath/Shower Day 2 - Phone/Video Call ✦ Blindfold Day 3 - Collaring ✦ Toys Day 4 - Roleplay ✦ Lingerie Day 5 - Foodplay ✦ Spanking Day 6 - Nekomata ✦ Shibari Day 7 - Body Worship ✦ Biting

© all rights reserved. all assets, artwork, and captions all rightfully belong to the organizers of grimmy week.

[artwithoutblood]

now i feel like a fraud because, like neil gaiman, i too have a dream that just wants to die. this is awkward.

Nooo! I'm sorry, I am the awkward one, getting all overexcited about a theory and forgetting that it can be really rude to compare. (Even accidentally.) That was just trying to spitball what the demon rules for dealing with Silas could be! 

Dream gods are just Like That anyway, they're a bunch of sad emo bastards. Too much time spent in their own other people's heads. It's the natural way of things - Dreams die.

Hive minding happens.

The characters are also quite different in personality, character arc, genre... Morpheus tried to clean up his act and in doing so brought about his own death indirectly. Silas is not contrite, went full serial killer and is completely unable to die despite actively seeking it. Plus under the horrific elements Sandman was a classic Greek tragedy with heaps of specific nods to Shakespeare and theatre, and Silas' story is more like cosmic, supernatural or psychological horror. It’s fine!

samir's domain is sand. all sand. little hideaways underneath, where he spends his days drawing and weaving. i could see him keeping silas in a coffin, buried deep, deep in the sand. should silas awaken, he will be drowned by the weight. perhaps adonis can trap his soul in a photograph and take him away. demons don't have souls.you get it. or, perhaps, his body must be forced into the erotic ritual of giving a human demonhood. take over another's aspect. let the former body rot.

👁️ 👁️ 🍿

Lore drop

That's pretty cool. The deserts bring to mind Africa, 'the cradle of humanity''. Or the Middle East, where important theories/inventions around math and astronomy emerged - showing people the workings of reality.

The drawing and weaving are the mind's images, creating narratives, constructing realities. Spinning a yarn. An unbroken thread passing through human lives, an extant tapestry recording experiences that cannot be forgotten.

The desert tunnels also recall the primordial caves. Ancient mankind. The dark. The unknown. The earliest recorded depictions of history and human lives.

Nightmares are as old as humanity and developed alongside them to deal with the horrors. Samir delves deep, down into the suppressed, the hidden back corners and labyrinths of your mind. Samir gets to the hidden reasons, the mysteries. While it's mostly around remembering and managing danger - Samir gives the tools and understanding to engage with, make sense of, and gain mastery of the world you live in.

So that's a really good idea...

By breaking Silas down to his building blocks (physically and/or metaphorically) and understanding his workings he could be stripped of his power by integrating him into, suppressing him under, or extinguishing him with another consciousness.

From a deadly figurative nightmare he could become a weaker literal nightmare. A powerless figment that is terrifying but loses its grip quickly, lurking in the subconscious like an attenuated virus, helping to deal with real fears and predators. A boogeyman suppressed under conscious awareness and weighted down by the sifting sands of Time. No longer real. Passing into myth, into collective memory, now only marked by a constellation.

Samir can also do the opposite. A horrific, primal and subliminal force can be given a different symbolic form. Processed, relived, released, ultimately taking a more acceptable expression.

*points at Silas* Get sublimated idiot.

I also like Adonis trapping him in a photograph. Silas doesn't have a soul but he is an idea, a concept that can be fictionalized into a grim old fairy tale. Like the opposite of those Victorian girls with their paper fairy hoax, people will gasp at the clever photography effects and the tide of scepticism could weaken his grip on humanity.

And perhaps he can even be trapped temporally in a photograph. Frozen forever in time.

“All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.” ― Susan Sontag

I'm not actually smart, I don't know who Susan Sontag is. Tumblr dash just shows me random quotes and this one was on the nose for Aeron and Adonis

it's alright! i meant it in the way where 3 years before the film was released, i wrote the plot of guardians of the galaxy 2 beat by beat for one of my ocs. and then i realized it's ok that i didn't flesh out that storyline because gotg2 was bad. i now have to be like "DAMN!! I CANT DO THIS, GAIMAN ALREADY DID"

samir keeps to himself. he's probably, actually, the most kind, gentle person in the universe thus far. he speaks like the morning dawn. he keeps the cave drawings. makes textiles, makes cloth. plays pretty strings, beautiful instruments. watches nightmares from afar. i know that we must suffer to grow. that doesn't mean i like it.

sometimes, he can make a nightmare just an hourglass. the sand falls on your face. he watches. he has acknowledged you. if he was finally able to find silas and drag him back home by the hair, he'd put his body in a coffin and bury it deep. perhaps, he'd force the essence out of silas and into a younger body. a pretty girl with the fluff of the clouds, eyes of the stars, she should be the one to represent dreams. children have dreams. she could play with toys in the dreamscape.

he is there in your first nightmare. he is the comfort of waking up. he is the comfort in knowing that you can overcome the fear of the nightmare. but he is also the repeating nightmare that haunts you, reminds you of your sins.

there are, perhaps, parallels between samir's solitude in his own caverns and kayn, crawling around in the cold of a dead culture.

because of your asks involving samir, here he is, in his glory.

[dollycxre]

.𖥔 ݁ ˖ you'll see my face, in every place, but you can't catch me now.

-> "Make a wish."

REQUESTS ARE CLOSED!

⋅ᯓᡣ𐭩

airi, she/her, minor, animal lvr, daydreamer, infp, multifandom writer, omniromantic bisexual, half-dead, half fairy, child of hades, always open to moots :3

-> rules

(a/n: im a minor so don't be freaky)

ps. fic ideas are appreciated, especially for fandoms that aren't pjo! (and you can just send me random thoughts about characters as well, I love that sorta thing)

-> PERCY JACKSON (BOOK SERIES)

magic in the making...

-> PERCY JACKSON (TV SHOW)

magic in the making...

->HEROES OF OLYMPUS

Yandere! Athena x Demigod! Darling - general hcs (fem reader)

yandere PJO! Hades x demigod! darling - general hcs

yandere! Hestia x fem! mortal! Reader - ♡ general hcs

yandere PJO! Percy Jackson x demigod! darling X yandere HOO! Jason Grace - general hcs

->TWILIGHT SAGA

magic in the making...

->TRIALS OF APOLLO

magic in the making...

->DORK DIARIES

magic in the making...

->MAGNUS CHASE

magic in the making...

->GREEK MYTHOLOGY

magic in the making...

->SEDUCE ME THE OTOME ( WOMEN ONLY)

magic in the making...

->HARRY POTTER HOGWARTS MYSTERY

magic in the making...

->CHALLENGERS

magic in the making...

->THE HUNGER GAMES

magic in the making...

->THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES

magic in the making...

->SCREAM (ALL 6 MOVIES)

magic in the making...

->TCOAAL (THE COFFIN OF ANDY AND LEYLEY)

magic in the making...

a/n: I don't support the incest part of this game so nothing for that!!

->JENNIFER'S BODY

magic in the making...

->PROJECT SEKAI

magic in the making...

->KPOP

A/N: I will only write for girl groups!!

magic in the making...

->PRETTY LITTLE LIARS

A/N: only the girlies!

magic in the making...

->HEATHERS

magic in the making...

->GIRL FROM NOWHERE

magic in the making...

->CARMEN SANDIEGO

magic in the making...

->AMERICAN HORROR STORY (coven, murder house, asylum, 1984 and apocalypse only!!)

magic in the making...

->MCU/MARVEL

A/N: once again, I will only be writing for the females!!

magic in the making...

->MIRACULOUS LADYBUG

magic in the making...

->BLUE LOCK

magic in the making...

->SPY X FAMILY

magic in the making...

->DDLC

magic in the making...

->EVER AFTER HIGH

magic in the making...

->HARRY POTTER

magic in the making...

->THE FOLK OF THE AIR

A/N: ask me about these after a couple of months, I still need to finish the series lol

magic in the making...

->ALL FOR THE GAME

magic in the making...

->MLP

magic in the making...

->FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY'S

magic in the making...

->OMORI

magic in the making...

->A GOOD GIRL'S GUIDE TO MURDER

magic in the making...

->DANGANRONPA 1, 2 AND 3

magic in the making...

->YANDERE SIMULATOR (maybe, I definitely don't support that pr3dator yand3v, so I probably won't write for this much or at all)

magic in the making...

->MANGA/MANHWA/MANHUA

A/N: please ask if I write for the specific one you want first!!

magic in progress...

!! IMPORTANT A/N: The fandoms listed below are the ones I won't write for very often or when I do, it'll probably not be reqs or asks ♥ !!

->GENSHIN IMPACT

magic in the making...

->HONKAI STAR RAIL

magic in the making...

A/N: The requests for Hoyoverse games are currently closed <;3

->BROOKLYN-99

A/N: I'll write for everyone except Holt, Kevin, Sarge, Boyle, Hitchcock and Scully

magic in the making...

->MODERN FAMILY

A/N: I don't write for Luke, Manny and Jay

magic in the making...

->ENCANTO

magic in the making...

->WEDNESDAY (NETFLIX SHOW)

magic in the making...

->YOU (NETFLIX SHOW)

magic in the making...

a/n: I used to keep up with this show only from 2018-2022 so I still gotta watch the latest season, so no reqs for that yet!!

!PLEASE ASK IF THERE'S A PARTICULAR FANDOM YOU WANT ME TO WRITE FOR THAT ISN'T MENTIONED HERE!!

[x-digitaldollhouse-x]

@cronakillz's April CAS Challenge, vol. 1

1. create a clown! someone silly for april fools!

Even the best parents fuck up sometimes and forget to hire an entertainer for their 7-year-old's birthday party. The solution is to grab some discounted stuff from Party City the morning before the party and tell their grumpy teen son he can buy some new video games if he entertains his little sister and her friends for an hour. He sustained minimal injuries.

2. create a three hundred year old vampire, obsessed with modern human culture

Windenburgish nobleman vampire takes a multi-century coffin nap and wakes up in the modern day. His plan is to stalk the streets at night for plasma... until he discovers Windenburg rave culture and decides it's more fun to trip out every weekend and just eat plasma fruit when he gets hungry.

3. create a spy!

I mean... the best spy is one you'd never suspect, right?

4. create a sim from the 1960’s

An intrepid teen detective solving mysteries around town with the help of some friends in 1960's Willow Creek.

5. create a sim inspired by an easter egg

Thank god for those jeans because I really didn't have a good pair of shoes for him.

6. create a sim inspired by MySims

I never played MySims, but I checked the wiki and liked Nicole Vogue's vibe.

7. create a sim that is the spawn of a greek god

Hermes' daughter, who inherited her dad's calf muscles.

8. create a set of opposite aesthetic identical twins!

One loves high fantasy, the other loves gritty sci-fi. Still, there's nothing they love more than hitting up cons together in cosplay.

9. create a sim entirely in greyscale

Rich silent film star who DEFINITELY DID NOT KILL HER LAST THREE HUSBANDS. DEFINITELY NOT.

10. create a sim that is a world famous musician

Fame is already stressful enough when you don't go on stage sleep-deprived one night and bomb so bad that a stadium full of your own fans boo you. When that does happen... you go back to your dressing room and engage in some self-destruction.

[princesssarisa]

I've finally reached the last set of tales in Heidi Ann Heiner's Cinderella Tales From Around the World. By some miracle I've managed to work my way through the entire book. The last few tales all have distinctly Cinderella-like aspects, but don't fit into any of the usual Cinderella tale categories (classic Cinderella, Donkeykin, Love Like Salt, or One-Eye, Two-Eyes, Three-Eyes).

*First is the Greek tale of Marietta and the Witch, Her Stepmother. This is chiefly a Snow White variant, but it begins and ends with episodes familiar from various Cinderella tales. Marietta's schoolteacher tricks her into killing her mother so she, the teacher, can marry the girl's father. Once she gets her wish, the stepmother turns against Marietta, and finally, Hansel and Gretel-style, she convinces the father to abandon his daughter in the mountains. But Marietta finds the home of forty giants, who take her in. From this point on, the story is strictly Snow White for a while, with Marietta's stepmother learning her whereabouts and giving her poisoned grapes, the giants placing her body in a gold coffin, which a prince finds, etc. But then after Marietta marries the prince, the plot follows the pattern of several Cinderella stories, as the stepmother turns her into a pigeon, but in the end the prince breaks the spell.

*Next is the tragic Austrian tale of Klein-Else (Little Else), which @countryhumansadorer38 mentioned to me not long ago. As they told me, it's a bit like a cross between Cinderella or Donkeyskin and Rumpelstiltskin... and it's actually a more detailed, literary version of another Austrian Donkeyskin tale called Cistl im Körbl (Head-Basket in Back-Basket) that I read earlier, but didn't fully summarize. The heroine is a baron's orphaned daughter, who flees from her home to escape from the enemies that killed her father, and finds work as a poultry-maid at a young baron's castle. She meets a mysterious knight, who shows her a hoary, hollow rock in which she finds beautiful gowns and money. He then leaves, saying he'll be back to see her again in seven years, and warning her not to forget his name (which he whispers to her, but we never learn). She wears her finery to church, the young baron falls in love with her, and the story plays out like a typical Donkeyskin: the baron finally learns her identity after she slips a jeweled ring into his pancakes. They marry, have children, and live in bliss for seven years. But then Klein-Else realizes that the knight will soon be back, and she's forgotten his name. Worse, she realizes that despite all her wealth as a baroness, she's done nothing to help the poor the way she once vowed she would, but only lived for pleasure with her husband. When the knight appears and she fails to remember his name, he takes her back to the hoary rock, but instead of finery, it now contains horrifying visions of suffering paupers, whom Klein-Else could have helped with her riches but ignored. Soon afterward, when her husband comes looking for her, he finds her slumped against the rock, dead.

**The similar tale of Cistl im Körbl doesn't end this way. The heroine only briefly panics over having forgotten the knight's name, but then she sees a gardener put his small head-basket (cistl) inside his larger back-basket (körbl) and she remembers that the knight's name was Cistl im Körbl. So when he appears, she greets him by name, and he smiles at her and then vanishes forever, leaving her to live happily ever after with her husband and children.

**It's very rare to find a Cinderella story with an unhappy ending, but the examples that do exist (Klein-Else, the Brazilian Dona Labismina, and the Zuñi tale of The Turkey Girl) all turn sad because the heroines forget what they owe to their magical helpers... and in Klein-Else's case, to others in need too. They all seem to be warnings for people who rise from rags to riches, so they won't forget where they came from or be ungrateful to whoever helped them to rise.

*Sodewa Bai (The Woman of Good Fortune) is an Indian tale where the only Cinderella element is the theme of a lost shoe leading the heroine to marriage. Sodewa Bai is a beautiful princess born with a gold necklace around her neck. An astrologer warns her parents never to let her take the necklace off, because it contains her soul, and if anyone else were to put it on, she would die. One day, the princess loses a slipper while playing and picking flowers outside, and it rolls down a hillside and into the jungle. There a prince finds it while hunting, and he traces it to Sodewa Bai, falls in love with her, and marries her. Unfortunately, in this polygamy-practicing country, he already has a wife from an arranged marriage, whom he doesn't love, and she becomes jealous. But Sodewa Bai is naïve, and one day she tells her about her soul necklace. The first wife has a servant woman steal it from Sodewa Bai while she sleeps, and Sodewa Bai dies, leaving the prince devastated. Like Snow White, she's too beautiful even in death to bury, so instead she's lain in an open-air tomb where visitors can see her. Yet unbeknownst to anyone, the servant woman takes off the necklace whenever she goes to bed, so at night, Sodewa Bai comes back to life. Eventually she gives birth to a son, and when the prince comes to visit the tomb again, he hears the baby crying, and soon reunites with his wife and learns what happened. He gets the necklace back, restoring Sodewa Bai to full-time life, and has his first wife and her servant imprisoned.

*The Tale of Princess Phulande is another Indian story, where the title character's wicked stepmother has a yogi turn the princess into a bird after her marriage, but she visits her rajah husband until he realizes her identity and makes the yogi undo the spell.

*The last story in this book (I can hardly believe I've reached it!) is the Louisiana Creole tale of The Talking Eggs. This isn't actually a Cinderella story as scholars define them, but a Kind and Unkind Girls story, in the vein of Toads and Diamonds or Mother Holle. These tales are close cousins to Cinderella, since they also have a heroine oppressed by her mother and sister or stepmother and stepsister, but they aren't the same. Still, many American classrooms use The Talking Eggs as an example of an African-American "Cinderella story" (including my own fifth grade class), which is why Heiner felt the need to include it in her book.

**By the way, many years ago, I remember seeing a cartoon adaptation of The Talking Eggs on TV. The setting was updated to modern-day New York City, the two main characters were children, the unkind sibling was a brother instead of a sister, and after receiving his magical punishment, he redeemed himself in the end. Does anyone else vaguely remember that cartoon?

I made it to the end! A part of me is relieved, while a part of me wishes there were more.

@ariel-seagull-wings, @adarkrainbow, @themousefromfantasyland

[best-nun-tournament]

Round 1

Skystar and Graywing (Warrior Cats) vs Sasuke and Itachi Uchiha (Naruto)

Scar and Mufasa (The Lion King) vs Jude and Taryn Duarte (The Folk of the Air)

Krauss, Eva, Rudolf and Rosa Ushiromiya (Umineko) vs The Princes of Stormhold (Stardust)

Blitzø and Barbie Wire (Helluva Boss) vs Bardas and Gorgas Lordan (The Fencer Trilogy)

Vinsmoke Ichiji, Niji, and Yonji (One Piece) vs Nikolai and Vasily Lantsov (Grishaverse/Shadow and Bone)

The Batsiblings (Batman) vs Rattlesnake and Sirocco (Wings of Fire)

Dee and Dennis Reynolds (It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia) vs Folgers Coffee Siblings (Folgers Coffee commercial)

Ianthe and Coronabeth Tridentarius (The Locked Tomb) vs Therese and Jeanette Voerman (Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines)

Junko Enoshima and Mukuro Ikusaba (Danganronpa) vs Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary (English history)

Ruby and Aquamarine Hoshino (Oshi no Ko) vs Richard and Helen Gansey (The Raven Cycle)

The Endless (Sandman) vs Lark and Sparrow Oak-Garcia (Dungeons and Daddies)

The Bridgerton siblings (Bridgerton) vs Clary Fairchild and Sebastian Morgenstern (The Shadowhunter Chronicles)

The Sanderson Sisters (Hocus Pocus) vs Velvet and Veneer (Trolls 3)

The Seven Sisters Colleges (Real Life) vs Zeus and Hera (Greek mythology)

Akio Ootori and Anthy Himemiya (Revolutionary Girl Utena) vs Tom and Jake Berenson (Animorphs)

The Hargreeves siblings (Umbrella Academy) vs Ledroptha Curtain (The Mysterious Benedict Society)

Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian (MDZS/The Untamed) vs Rei Asaka and Fukiko Ichinomiya (Oniisama E)

Adam and Eve (NieR: Automata) vs Dys and Tangent (I Was A Teenage Exocolonist)

Percy Jackson and Polyphemus (Percy Jackson) vs Mercer and Gage (The Silt Verses)

King Richard and Prince John (Robin Hood/English history) vs Cleopatra VII and Ptolemy XIII (Egyptian history)

Uru Somezuki and Saito Sejima (AI: The Somnium Files) vs Illumi, Killua and Alluka Zoldyck (Hunter x Hunter)

Andrew and Ashley Graves (The Coffin of Andy and Leyley) vs Belzedar (The Belgariad)

Cersei, Jaime, and Tyrion Lannister (A Song of Ice and Fire) vs Torak (The Belgariad)

Phillip and Caleb Wittebane (Owl House) vs Ogata Hyakunosuke and Hanazawa Yuusaku (Golden Kamuy)

Ruffnut and Tuffnut Thorston (How To Train Your Dragon) vs Andrew and Aaron Minyard (All for the Game)

Goneril and Regan (King Lear) vs Ruby Rocks and Saccharina Frostwhip (Dimension 20: A Crown of Candy)

The Beagle Boys (Donald Duck universe) vs Catherine and Hindley Earnshaw (Limbus Company)

Sam and Dean Winchester (Supernatural) vs John Wilkes and Edwin Booth (US history)

Anne and Mary Boleyn (English history) vs Rodrick, Greg, and Manny Heffly (Diary of a Wimpy Kid)

Anastasia, Drizella, and Cinderella (Cinderella) vs Wolf 40f and Wolf 42f "Cinderella" (Real Life, Druid Peak wolf pack)

Byes: Azula and Zuko (Avatar: The Last Airbender), Cain and Abel (The Bible)

[creative-classpect]

The Land of Immortelles and Iridium

A desolate husk of a world. A mass grave of a civilization, littered with shining silver iridium flowers plunged into the earth as a supposed sign of reverence. A cruel mockery of honor as the warped metal radiates with destructive magic, amplifying all energy nearby to the point of obliteration.

The nails of this coffin world have been planted long ago.

Welcome to LOIAI. The Land of Immortelles and Iridium.

LOIAI is an endless graveyard of dusty hills, smothered skies, blasted out ruins, and the ominous and eternal presence of the iridium immortelles. This blasted world was once a thriving garden, an eternal paradise of eden, and remnants can still be found. Sequestered in burrows and caves remain the last vestiges of nature. Hauntingly still gardens that have long since withered. These remains form the root and stem of the immortelles above.

It's a mystery as to how exactly the world fell into ruin, but even the most cursory glance will lead you to the culprit. The iridium flower sculptures poison everything around them, mind, body, and soul. 

Corruption made manifest.

There is a peculiar trace of magic that emanates from the flowers, forming a latticework of arcane energy that runs through the earth and sky. While other things may crumble, the iridium composition allows it to remain. Twisted and eternal. It not only brings misery, but seems to feed on it in return. The more anger, hate, and pain it finds, the more they grow.

But it was not always this way. Beneath the waves of ash, buried far below the crust of the world, deep roots cross and intersect, leading to places foul and unknown. Whatever great tragedy swept across this land, it grew from deep, deep underground… down where the light of Skaia will never reach. Down into the suffocating darkness where only the most ancient of horrors lie.

The Maid of Rage must scour the land, fending off the constant force of corruption from the iridium immortelles, and combat the constant source of pain, misery, and anguish radiating out from the core of the planet. Only then, when they find the heart of suffering, can the world be made whole again. 

But it’s an awful long way down…

Denizen: Lyssa, Greek goddess of rage.

Features

The Roots of Misery

About halfway through the top layer of the planet one would find something of a cage. A vast, interconnected sprawl of metallic wire and bars, keeping anything below in and anything above, out. These roots are where the iridium immortelles spring up from, drilling their way to the surface to spread ever further.

These roots form a dense and treacherous biome and mark a turning point for LOIAI. While the world above is certainly dreadful, down below is so much worse. The Deep Dark. The distance between Hades and Tartarus. While the world above may be a graveyard of destructive magic, down below is an eternal prison, containing all the evils and sorrows of the world. 

Here there are monsters.

The Pit of Despair

A place just beyond the precipice/cage that is the Roots of Misery. A yawning void, a chasm of incredible space, far larger than anyone would ever expect. It is the end. The gaping maw of infinity. Time and space seem to fall away here, unwinding oneself from distance, direction, and duration. Clocks and compasses cease to function and, more often than not, shatter entirely.

Everything about the pit is oppressive. The heavy weight of the air, the grim shadows that lurk around each corner. Even many of Sburb’s functions such as instant messaging and alchemizing can refuse to work down there. 

There is only you. And the horrors that the Pit holds.

Good luck.

- - -

This post was commissioned by @apogender ! If you want to commission me or support my content, you can find me @ https://ko-fi.com/kesscal or over at https://linktr.ee/Skywhale09 !  

[gaunt-and-hungry]

OC Introduction: Erebus (Wilbur) Flamel

Erebus -- Ancient Greek: Ἔρεβος, '"darkness, gloom"' - also known as Erebos - The Personification of Darkness. Son of Chaos. derives from the Proto-Indo-European *h₁regʷ-os- ("darkness"), and is cognate with the Sanskrit rájas ("dark (lower) air, dust"), the Armenian erek ("evening"), the Gothic riqis, and the Old Norse røkkr ("dark, dust") Wilbur - Name of Birth - Wilbur derived from the mediaeval nickname 'wildbor', which means 'wild boar'. The wild boar was considered one of the most difficult creatures to hunt, indicating that the bearer was particularly tough or strong. Wilbur is also a name in Old German, meaning 'resolute' or 'brilliant'. Captain Blackwater - So Called, As They Say: For His Love Of Coffee Captain of: The Revenge Three Anchor Three Mast Frigate Thirty and One Half Metres

Born in Iceland. Mysterious Background. Tragic and woeful. Knows the icy northern waters and the indigenous folks of Greenland. A pirate.

Spent six years as a prisoner aboard an English Vessel as a wanted criminal.

He/Him/They/Them , Pansexual / Queer / --- Terrified of gentle hands. ---

A young Sea Captain with a distaste for the English and the damage they have wrought across their colonialism. His life is held in the balance of how useful he is to the British Admiralty. Once his usefulness is up it's the hangman's noose for him... less he finds a way to weasel out. Willing to go to any lengths to free his crew from the collateral of his crimes.

People Of Interest: Captain Francis Crozier ~ Captain James Fitzjames ~ Petty Officer Thomas Jopson ~ Heinrich Cornelius Reiss (Open to OC on OC interactions in your own terrorverses)

Hungry. Guilty. Haunted. Gaunt. "Could I be someone for someone else? Am I even worthy of such a thing, Captain?"

Weakness: Compassion. Lead by a compass.

You cannot spell Compassion without Compass. Strengths: Navigates the oceans solely by intuition and the stars. If he has an image of someone he can find them through intuition alone like a bloodhound.

The stars told me where you were. Their secrets reflect in the sea.

"Sacrifice is what we do for the people we love." - If the word of the law doesn't get you And the guilt you ignore's gonna set you Free, free, free If the cross on the door doesn't scare you And the beast of the moor's gonna spare you Boy, come home to me - (Phildel - Holes in your Coffin)

"Your lives have a future so long as mine ends. I can save you, yet. I just have to get these men home." - Waking up in the fog, the dust and the pain And of the sunny days, no traces remain How could you be the one if you sail away Without you I can't stand the sound of the rain - (Ghost Lights - Woodkid)

"I have no home to go to, Captain. No one to go home to. It is either I bring you back to England alive or I am promised the ropes of my ship and a nice tree." - Watching the figures, all the saints, but mostly sinners Come and go and some are desperate, but the others have The sense that they do belong And I do not belong - (notre dam - Paris Paloma)

"Soft hands terrify me... I never knew soft hands. Many have made sure I would have plenty of reminders of that." - Oh, 'cause they will run you down, down 'til the dark Yes and they will run you down, down 'til you fall And they will run you down, down 'til you go Yeah, 'til you can't crawl no more - (Way Down We Go - KALEO)

"Love may blossom in the darkest and coldest of places. So long as love blooms there will be warmth in the cold." - Holding you close feels like a cut-throat Losing blood, the weakness of falling in love - (Afraid of the Dark - Phildel)

"I don't sleep so well anymore. Too many cold bodies in my mind in my bed. Often, I dream of drowning." And I was never afraid of the dark No, I was never afraid until you Oh, the weapon you make of my heart (Afraid of the Dark - Phildel)

I've never not known what hungry means. I have never not known pain. I have known such strife and suffering in the world. The Revenge? She's my ship. And on my ship there is no loud voices of anger. There are no empty bellies. Only joy. On my ship there are no lashes that split skin. There is no cold hearts. People are free to be who they are. To love as they are. Isn't that the world we all wish to live in? That is what she means to these people... my crew. It is their place to be safe. To have a home.

-"But not for you."- The Revenge is my crew's home. I cannot see a future for myself. To settle down? I'm tired of being wanted for the wrong reasons. I'm exhausted of running. I am tired. I am so, very, very tired. But I have no where to go. Not with all I have done. But if I can pave a road for my crew... They are good people. If I can do that, well... Then all I have wrought upon myself will have been worth that. -"You're atoning?"

I'm washing the blood out of my hair and off my hands. I'm trying. I'm trying. God, am I trying. If I can do just this one expedition... If I can. Whatever becomes of me after this? That is up to the Admiralty... My fate lays in their hands.

Very big special thank you for the inspiration from @gayarsonistslullaby who did it first. I had so much fun with this and it was incredibly cathartic for me.

[betwixtbeasts]

— APOTHEOSIS character introduction (picrew)

MADELEINE

A student of the University of Detroit and the University of Londonium, Madeleine is one of the first female graduates of both schools. Her object of study is the past, specifically the budding field of archeology. The Temple of Zeus near Themyscira is her first major dig as a PhD, and she expects to be fighting the men there for prestige. She doesn't expect to find a mysterious chamber in beneath the temple, a glass coffin, or an Amazon, alive and awake.

AMARYLLIS

A fierce warrior and Greek Amazon, Amaryllis lived in a time when the power of the gods was ending, and the time of her people was ending, too. Perhaps it was this knowledge that made her less wary — surely the gods had more important things to do than try to trick her. Zeus proves otherwise, when he tries to bed her. Refusing, he curses her to a life immortal, trapped in his temple, never to be freed. She expects to be there until the end of the world, should that ever come. But one day, she opens her eyes to Madeleine.

read apotheosis on wattpad.

[pmamtraveller]

ISLE OF THE DEAD (1883) by ARNOLD BÖCKLIN

The painting depicts two figures, one oarsman, the other a woman in white rowing a small boat on an island. The shape at the head of the boat can be interpreted as a coffin. The island itself is covered by a cypress grove with many crypt doors carved into the rock

The strength of this image can be attributed to its thematic as well as stylistic complexity. The origin of the scene can be traced back to GREEK mythology. The oarsman can be seen as CHARON, the ferryman of HADES, who carries his passengers over the River STYX to the underworld.

In addition to the ENGLISH CEMETERY, several real-life models have been proposed for the island. These include ST. GEORGE ISLAND, MONTENEGRO. The rich colour and grandeur of the landscape are heavily inspired by GERMAN ROMANTIC landscape painting.

The painting gained immense popularity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in GERMANY and found its way into the homes of many bourgeois families. With the painting’s focus on natural beauty and the dignity of the dead, it’s no surprise that it also expressed GERMAN NATIONALISM.

The painting’s most famous owner is ADOLF HITLER, who bought it in 1933 and hung it in his successor REICH CHANCELLERY, ALBERT SPEER. Despite its political connotations, the painting’s mysterious appeal has endured, and it remains popular in post-war Germany.

[redrobin-detective]

Got to see a live Performance of an Ellery Queen show and it was fun but it felt like some of the clues were Shibboleths.

Yea I read the Greek Coffin Mystery (one Queen's earliest) and it definitely was outdated a bit and some stuff didn't exactly cross over. The gotchas don't catch if the context isn't there. That said, I have enjoyed other, later Queen stories. I rather liked the Door Between when I read it in college

[semper-legens]

58. The Sin Eater, by Megan Campisi

Owned: No, library Page count: 349 My summary: May Owens is just fourteen when she steals a loaf of bread, and is sentenced to be a sin-eater for the rest of her life. Invisible to the world, feared and shunned, May must live at the bottom of society and take on the sins of the city so that others can be free. But when she is summoned to court to hear the sins of a dying lady, she finds herself embroiled in a conspiracy far wider than she could have imagined... My rating: 4/5 My commentary:

This is an interesting one. I picked it up entirely based on its title, because sin-eaters are a history I know something about! The tradition of sin-eating was that a person would eat a meal, typically bread and beer, over the coffin of someone who had died in exchange for money. That person would in doing so take on the sins of the deceased person, allowing their soul to more quickly go to Heaven and their spirit to be at rest, while the sin-eater would be laden with the deceased's sins. Typically, the sin-eater would be a poor vagrant desperately in need of the money, so much that they risked their immortal soul for the needs of their mortal bodies. Campisi has stated that this book is not meant to be a reflection of the actual historical reality of sin-eaters, more an extrapolation of the concept - taking the idea of eating people's sins and expanding it into an elaborate system with different foods for different sins. Overall, this is a really interesting book, though I do have a few quibbles with it.

Our protagonist is May, a teenage girl sentenced to becoming a sin-eater after stealing a loaf of bread. As sin-eaters are not permitted to speak outside of the sin-eating ritual, she spends a lot of the book wordless, but that doesn't mean silent. The first person narration is told from her perspective and imbued with a lot of character. It was a really distinct voice, you always got a lot of her personality shining through. Her arc sees her struggling from a desperate vagrant to uncovering a mystery at the heart of the royal court, learning a sense of self-confidence in so doing. As a sin-eater she is reviled, but so too is she given a purpose and role in her society that is both lauded and vilified, commanding some fear while being seen as the lowest of the low. May comes to weaponise this, while she still struggles with seeing herself as a cursed creature. It's this dichotomy that really forms the core of the book's ethos, to my mind. Women are at once treated as angels and devils, and it is up to the individual how she copes with the stereotypes afforded to her by gender.

My issue with this book comes with its relationship to historicity and the worldbuilding inherent to it. See, in reflection of the fact that the author did not intend this to be a literal interpretation of sixteenth century England, this book is set in an ambiguous other place. People there are Anglish, their religion follows the Maker, the rival faith is the Eucharistian faith. Okay, that's fine, use a thinly-veiled version of sixteenth century England so you can build your imaginative take on the idea of sin-eating, that's fine. But the effort in worldbuilding seems to stop after that? There are still Jewish people, there's still a France, and the Hebrew and Greek languages exist unchanged. How difficult would it have been to call all of these things a slightly different yet still recognisable name? It's so weird that Campisi didn't seem to want to put in the effort to develop her ideas past England's shores, even when it would only have taken a moment to switch out France for Gaul. It's not a huge problem, the plot remains unchanged regardless, but it did bug me as I was reading.

The other quibble I had was that sometimes the book waxes into questionable language. We can't go a sentence about the old sin-eater to whom May is apprenticed without noticing how huge and big and fat she is. And, okay, I get that this is in contrast to the literally-starving May, but the exaggerated grotesqueness of this woman's body made me pretty uncomfortable. So too did the descriptions of May's vagrant friends, lepers and outcasts all, though in fairness this is likely more a way of representing what people of the time might have thought of people with facial and bodily deformities more than the author implying that said people are horrific. Still, it rubbed me up the wrong way.

Otherwise, however, I'd very much recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject matter. It's a gripping tale of deceit - the political intrigue is balanced well with May's character arc and ongoing development, though admittedly I was far more interested in the latter than the former. I had fun with it! Uh, insofar as 'fun' can be applied to a book about death and murder and such. Hey, I'm morbid, you knew this.

Next up, another of my morbid special interests!

[tellingyouaboutoldstuff]

This post is mostly right but lets clear some things up because spreading of proper/accurate knowledge is important! She did have sick ass tattoos, they are very well preserved and are generally awesome.

The 'bag of weed' is a misunderstanding however. She was buried with what was originally thought to be a container of cannabis ( for fairly good reason as other Pazyryk burial cites have been found to contain cannabis seeds and a practice surrounding burning them was described by the Greek historian Herodotus ) but later tests found them to be coriander seeds probably used to cover the smell of the body. This was mentioned in one of the earliest TV airings surrounding the discovery in 1998, here is the transcript available on the NOVA ( an American science channel owned by PBS ) website:

"NARRATOR: More mysterious objects hint at spiritual beliefs and rituals. A small stone dish found at the end of the coffin contained seeds. Similar dishes in other tombs held cannabis, also known as marijuana—confirming a practice described by Herodotus.

LAMBERG-KARLOVSKY: The Scythians take the seed of this cannabis and throw the seed onto the stones as they glow with heat. The seeds so cast on the stone gives off smoke and a vapor. No Greek steam bath could be stronger. The Scythians in their delight at the steam bath howl loudly.

NARRATOR: But under close inspection the seeds in the Ice Maiden's tomb turned out not to be cannabis. They were coriander."

End quote.

So! Even if the seeds were cannabis 'bag of weed' would be a reallll stretch! It was part of a burial ritual with seeds and would not imply the smoking habits of who it was buried with. This is thoroughly confusing as an uncited Siberian Times article published in 2014 gets this wrong, which influenced a Huffington post article that also got it wrong that resulted in the Wikipedia page being-that's right, wrong! I'm currently working to get the Wikipedia page edited as accurately as possible. Cannabis is mentioned alongside the woman in this 2014 article: https://scfh.ru/papers/put-k-nebesnym-pastbishcham/

But only tangentially as a theory for Pazyryk medical habits, not associated in any facts of the burial or study. Yeah she probably smoked weed sometimes from what we've seen about the culture, but she wasn't buried with it. Wildly understandable misunderstanding for how many articles get this wrong. Grr.

[yhwhrulz]

Worthy Brief - September 13, 2024

Death to the flesh!

Galatians 2:20 - I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

When we study a translation of a Scripture passage we often miss out on the nuances hidden in the original Hebrew (Old Testament) or Greek (New Testament). Often, it’s not that a word is mistranslated, but that rendering the meaning in one English word is difficult if not impossible.

One such word is the word "flesh". The often-used Greek word for "flesh", "sarx", forms the etymological root for our English word, "sarcophagus". Sarcophagi are ornately adorned stone coffins where the mortal flesh of humans (usually significant in some way during their lifetime) becomes entombed. They can be quite ornate and beautifully crafted. Thus, the Greek word for "flesh", ironically, carries in its meaning a hint of the mortal nature of the stuff we are made of, and the vessel to which it is destined. Normally, the simple word "flesh" doesn't necessarily connote "mortality"…unless you spend some time thinking about it…

Our flesh can also be made beautiful, and many spend quite a bit of time and resources beautifying it. Yet our "sarx", or mortal human body is also a kind of "sarcophagus" since it's destined to decay, a temporary vessel no more eternal than a coffin.

The apostle Paul affirms that he is "crucified with Christ"; that his mortal flesh with its irrevocably sinful tendency and bondage to decay, has been identified with the Messiah in His death on the cross. Throughout his epistles, Paul frequently warns believers not to live a life "after the flesh", that is according to its predilections and desires. Living that way could be described as being trapped within a “coffin”.

Yet Paul says in another place that "we carry this treasure in jars of clay"…[2 Cor. 4:7] i.e. that the "sarcophagi" in which we walk around are vessels of resurrection life-- the very life of Messiah which was regenerated by His Spirit in us.

The great mystery and challenge of a believer's life is that we have the constant choice whether to be a walking self-serving "sarcophagus", or a living breathing jar of clay filled with God's Holy Spirit and bearing all the fruit of love, joy, peace, etc.

Your "sarx" can be a self-serving coffin, or a life-giving vessel. If you are born from above, the sinful nature of your body has been crucified with Christ, and your constant life choice will be the extent to which you recognize that reality, and are filled with the resurrection life which the new birth affords. You were not given a spirit of fear, but of love, power and a sound mind. Don't be an ornate living tomb; be a life-giving, spirit-filled jar of clay!

Shabbat Shalom and have a great weekend!

Your family in the Lord with much agape love,

George, Baht Rivka, Obadiah and Elianna (Missouri) (Layfayette, Indiana)

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