#the shallow sea

[strqyr]

why does 'the shallow sea' make such a big deal about grimm not figuring into this story so don't think about them. it does it three times and it certainly feels incredibly deliberate:

(And Grimm. There have always been Grimm. There will always be Grimm. But those creatures don't figure in this story, so just put them out of your mind, if you can.)

(No, not Grimm. Grimm are not alive in the usual sense, nor does anyone want them. Please do put them out of your mind, if you can.)

(Were you wondering whether there were any Grimm on the island in those days? As I've told you, Grimm do not figure into this story, and I wish you would clear them from your mind.)

like, there are plenty of others stories in the book that don't feature grimm, but only 'the shallow sea' keeps mentioning over and over again. it's the constant "i bet you were thinking about grimm when the story never actually mentions them besides these parentheses parts which causes you to actually think about them but really, you shouldn't, so why are you after i put them into your mind?" that's mind boggling to me.

[nightmare-foundation]

Half baked crack theory that I don't particularly believe but think is an interesting concept anyways:

Oz accidentally made the faunus between the time Light gave him his curse and reincarnating.

To explain it, essentially, Light explicitly states that "your kind will come back" when talking to Ozma. Not only this, but there's an established time between dying and reincarnating (him immediately reincarnating in Oscar is implied to be unusual iirc). I doubt he'd remember this in between state either, if anything even happens in this state.

Also, both of the faunus creation myths feel kinda Oz-ish. The shallow sea places an emphasis on individuality and being yourself (something Oz deems is important multiple times), and the judgement of faunus has an emphasis on unity. The animal god himself sounds and feels a lot like Ozpin.

So like, maybe Ozma's soul wandered Remnant for a while as humanity was evolving and somehow he created the faunus (whether accidentally or on purpose somehow).

Who knows lol, I'm throwing this idea out there. I don't really believe it, but it has some weird amount of ground to stand on.

A possible explanation for the faunus creation myths feeling Oz-like is that he could've helped shape their cultures (if he can reincarnate into faunus, which I can't see why he wouldn't).

[mageflow]

Nothing like coming up with and writing an NPC, and thinking “Oh, the gang is gonna love this blorbo.” And then they doooooo!

[psalidodont]

[caleod]

25-6-24

[vgwater]

[noahhawthorneauthor]

these are some of my favorites ✨🏳️‍🌈📚

[akakris10]

never forget that the sea is now kind

[toad-in-a-trenchcoat]

Little treasures

— — —

Happy Mother’s Day

[gilliontidestriderchampionoftheu]

god i love riptide. who wants to talk about how the prophecy has split and changed over the centuries and how we still dont actually know the original version of it

[pineartppland]

Inktober Day 24 : Shallow

[bestworstcase]

first paragraph of 'the shallow sea':

Long ago, before the fish had scales, before the birds had feathers, and before the turtles had shells, when our god still walked and crawled and slithered the earth, there were only Humans and animals. (And Grimm. There have always been Grimm. There will always be Grimm. But those creatures don’t figure in this story, so just put them out of your mind, if you can.)

last paragraph:

From that moment on, there have been animals, Humans, and Faunus. And the descendants of the Humans who turned away from our god’s great gift have always carried envy in their hearts. To this day, they resent us for reminding them of what they are not and what they never can be.

"only humans and animals (and grimm, but never mind them)" -> two more rhetorical "interruptions" bringing up the grimm specifically to instruct the listener not to think about them -> "now there are animals, humans, and faunus"

omitting the grimm from this paragraph—after the recurring references to them—is. an interesting thing to do given the parallelism of "humans and animals (and grimm)" / "animals and humans and faunus"

and then. "what they are not and what they never can be"

is such specific wording

"what they could never be." "what they never can be." the latter is a statement of pride in having chosen to change mingled with scorn for humans who refused to change and persecute the changed. the former…

"why spend our lives trying to redeem these humans" <- why spend our lives trying to appease the old gods and return things to the way they were before; why spend our lives resisting change.

"when we could replace them with what they could never be" <- salem has always been about overthrowing and replacing the gods, and she is also not human anymore; 'the shallow sea' is an allegory about the faunus but also it is just salem's story, a leap of faith into mystical waters that changed her into something new. and that myth is an ancient oral tradition. and in the lost fable, salem quotes its concluding lines to express her alternative path to the mandate

(which. would be in line with salem's manner of speech generally; as i've discussed before, her big speeches are rehearsed and she struggles to go off script. it makes…sense that she would fall back on quoting from an oral tradition like this in a tense moment, and in many ways 'the shallow sea' does challenge the brothers' perspective on humankind in ways that are cogent for her rejection of their mandate, so it also makes sense that salem would connect the dots)

at a minimum i think "what they never can be" signals that "what they could never be" is also not a statement of genocidal intent because… why would you end this faunus-origin myth with an almost identical phrase to salem's final words in her origin episode if she was proposing genocide, lmfao

especially when:

In the aftermath of the Great War, when Faunus settled on Menagerie, the story of a magical island made just for them has become tinged with bittersweet irony. Consequently, the story has fallen out of favor and I understand it is rarely spoken these days. This, too, influenced my to record it before it is lost to posterity.

Here I will remind you that this story—dare I say every story ever told—may still hold a kernel of truth, even if the plot details are contrived. Whatever the criticisms laid upon “The Shallow Sea,” in my opinion it still holds deep truths about Humans and Faunus that everyone should take the time to consider.

ozpin's annotations on all of these tales contain pretty fucking blatant foreshadowing, and his notes on this one flag that this myth is one of the stories that is "true" for a given value of truth. compare 'the two brothers':

Remnant survived the Great War, but while the four kingdoms now cooperate and coexist, our bond seems tenuous. We have a fragile peace, and in some ways, we are more divided than ever. Even if the gods aren’t real, even if they don’t return to judge us for our deeds, we should act each day as though they are arriving tomorrow. In the end, we will be the arbiters of our fates. We will either create a beautiful, peaceful world and live in harmony together or destroy ourselves and our planet, and the gods will judge what we have chosen.

(<- note that these and 'the hunter's children' are the only stories wherein ozpin mentions the great war; on 'the hunter's children' he "speculates" that the last king of vale based the four-huntsman teams idea on the fairytale, and his reason for invoking the specter of war after 'the two brothers' is obvious, but that leaves 'the shallow sea' as the odd one out… unless you associate the story with salem, and then ozpin's choice to emphasize that this particular story has fallen out of favor and is seldom told anymore is perhaps worth raising an eyebrow at.)

[dnd-character-concept]

We're not gonna fuck the skeletons

Not with that attitude

[mageflow]

I could ask about a beloved NPC from Dandelion Farmers but. I crave Khulan deets. >:)

(I asked for clarity and the number was 4, so here goes!) 4: Do they have any scars or tattoos?

Yes of course! She has a lot of scars on her hands and lower arms from a lot of fist fighting and hard physical work, and a few on her face, also from fist fighting. And a few other wounds over her body, each one probably has a story that has a 50% chance of being real, and a 50% chance of being something she made up to sound cool. Tattoos on the other hand, she's about a third of the way done a sleeve working from the right shoulder down, with a lot of various iconography and plant designs and monsters. She knows how to give tattoos (possibly gave Rhea one of hers mayhaps), but pays the professionals to do her ink.

[psalidodont]

[reneeofthestars]

Inktober 2023 Day 24: Shallow