rosy-redamancy

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"...He was like a criminal on death row, waiting for his sentence, and he closed his eyes. Yet unexpectedly, his eyes weren’t closed for long before they abruptly blinked open. A pair of arms had circled around him from behind, and hugged him with force all of a sudden. Xie Lian had buried his face in his back and also didn't speak. Though nothing was said, it was enough..."

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Have you seen this post?

You probably have. It currently has over 120,000 notes, largely because of this addition.

Of course it's going to get reblogged, this kind of unsourced factoid does numbers on here. But something about it wasn't quite right.

A bit of searching turned up the origin of the "fact".

Alright, so it's someone who posted this on reddit 4 years ago and somehow ended up in the search hits. And the post confuses the electric eel (from South America) with the electric catfish (from the Nile, which the Egyptians would have known about).

Reminder: this is an electric eel (Electrophorus electricus). It is from South America. (image from Wikipedia)

And this is an electric catfish (Malapterurus electricus). It is from the Nile and would have been familiar to the ancient Egyptians. (image from Wikipedia)

And then of course people were speculating in the notes to that post about trade routes between South America and Egypt. Excellent scholarship everyone.

At this point I was ready to call it another made-up internet fact that gets reified by people repeating it. But something was still bothering me.

An ancient Egyptian slab from 3100 BC. What could that be...

Oh.

The Narmer palette. It's the goddamn Narmer palette. (image, once again, from Wikipedia)

So where is this "angry catfish"?

It's not the Egyptian name for the electric catfish.

It's... Narmer. It's Narmer himself.

Narmer's name is written as above (detail of top middle of the palette), using the catfish (n`r) and the chisel (mr), giving N'r-mr. The chisel is associated with pain, so this reads as "painful catfish", "striking catfish", or, yes, "angry catfish" or other similar variants, although some authors have suggested that it means "Beloved of [the catfish god] Nar".

So.

Where does this leave us?

It would appear that this redditor not only confused electric eels with electric catfish, but also confused a Pharaoh's name with the name of a fish. And then it got pushed to the top search hits by a crappy search engine and shared uncritically on tumblr.

In short, "the electric eel is called angry catfish" factoid actually literacy error. Angry Catfish, who ruled upper Egypt and smote his enemies, is an outlier adn should not have been counted.

Also the Arabic name for the electric catfish is raad (thunder) or raada (thunderer).

References

Afsaruddin, A., & Zahniser, A. H. M. (1997). Humanism, culture, and language in the Near East: studies in honor of Georg Krotkoff. Eisenbrauns.

Clayton, P. A. (2001). Chronicle of the Pharaohs. Thames & Hudson.

Godron, G. (1949). A propos du nom royal. Annales du Service des antiquités de l'Egypte, 49, 217-221.

Sperveslage, G., & Heagy, T. C. (2023). A tail's tale: Narmer, the catfish, and bovine symbolism. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 109(1), 3-319.

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got a fun bot comment on a svsss podfic and it made me laugh so hard that I had to make it into a meme

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thinking about all of the Featured™️ ghost city citizens - the pig, the rooster, and presumably(?) jian lan - who were hunted by cultivators after taking revenge (or even just defending themselves) against awful people who had hurt them or their loved ones….and then came to ghost city and were protected and defended by hua cheng.

this isn’t the first time the idea of hua cheng being a defender of the downtrodden and abused is mentioned either - at the very beginning of black water arc, when they’re going through the fake list of people that the reverend of empty words has killed, hua cheng jumps in to say “no, that’s wrong, because i killed those people.” and xie lian makes sure to note that all of the people whose deaths he claimed were awful, vicious tyrants and evil people.

and like. of course. in the kiln. the forging of e’ming. the humans he saved. but my point is that is not a one-off moment - it goes to the core of who hua cheng is.

like not only does that say so much about why the ghost city residents love hua cheng so much and are so loyal to him, it shows that he has the kind of reputation where, if you’re being persecuted, you can go to ghost city and hua chengzhu will shelter you. ghost city isn’t a scary place, unless you’re a piece of shit. it’s a safe haven for the victims of the world because hua cheng makes it that way.

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This is how I imagine this scene when I read it haha + a little bingqiu doodle (maybe i will color it one day)

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Our beautiful rain master, Yushi Huang on the cover of tgcf AD s3 ep 11

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mei nianqing in front of a 10 year old: your highness this kid seems to be a gemini? :/ it’s not too late to kill him

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Missing them lately

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hard cider was invented when someone decided to make beer that tastes good instead of bad

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The Crown Prince of Xianle ♥

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generative AI literally makes me feel like a boomer. people start talking about how it can be good to help you brainstorm ideas and i’m like oh you’re letting a computer do the hard work and thinking for you???

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Weeoooohwhhh quick drawing of HIM

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