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golden-----hour · 3 months

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131

6/29/24

I do not want to write, I want to sleep. I am awake because that dude, Hunter, who I once spoke to on Grindr and saw on Tinder, who did not swipe right on me, is beginning a job with Meta as a software something. It rose something out of me. If I have a lot of room for choice, should I have tried to maximize profits to have more time for rest, especially as I cope with a unique Post-Covid exhaustion? I feel envious of a lucrative job because it makes people seem valuable. So I stayed awake and kept being awake.

Today I have a bad headache but I cannot sleep. I exchange nearly bizarre messages with Dan Flaherty about love and the world and I feel sick of it. I just want to be here, at home, and lie down and have a break for a while, I think. I thought that I wanted to be independent and immune but I don't feel dread reintegrating into this version, which means my feelings pre-departure were not as bad as I think.

I had other more profound things to maybe share but the act of writing always distract me. I can feel skepticism say that inhibition is just the lens, and that in good writing, isn't the act additive, after all?

I was watching a YouTube video and now I am listening to music in writing these words out. Process. It is #3 by Aphex Twin, which I could not remember when Ragav was here, so I sent it to him. I am not sure which information is appropriate for whom. Now that I am writing a lot of different facts are occurring to me simultaneously.

A few sentences for Dad, with whom I spoke about family and selflessness and living for something. I think Dad loves us all so much he forgets himself but I think remembering himself hurts too much. I cautioned him to remember while he was drinking from an amber glass. He spoke, as always, about how his family [. ]. I don't have the sentence for it right now, but should I? If it is me reading, after all, then I don't need to. And why must I commit everything to ritual to preserve it- can't it just sometimes happen to happen? Must it be a label to, something essential, just to, not live for a few weeks, but have residency in importance, in the heart of the body, which is not the heart, but the brain. Dad said I am smarter than him, smarter, smarter, but it is actually not true and I learned that during the convo. How can I know I would have survived what he survived? I admit the lenses are all wrong, and that his deep wisdom and my overthinking are the difference between what a lake knows about the ocean. So there is that shore of understanding I have created in language. He explained needing to work for a while. He explained how Mom is not so comforting- which I read in his eyes - how he is warmer. Mom is comforting to me, though. We talked about how Lily is quite reactive to Mom and I am not. And why might that be? Why is the stupidest interrogative because we ignore everything that is not language when we ask it. The body doesn't like a why, it prefers a how, and loves a what and when. My heart hiccups an if. It does and doesn't, which is exactly what I mean. I am able to hear the meaning and love in what Mom says that maybe Lily cannot. I do not know. I have radical empathy most of the time.

I just called Lily for two minutes but didn't know what to say because I wanted to be comforted and she doesn't know how to do that like I know how to do that. She has to share exactly everything that happens in a day because there are fewer people that listen for her than for me, which I understand, but I wasn't in that space. And I know that she just was talking to Annie, at least. And some things no one can draw out of you except yourself. Many beautiful conversations make my heart bright but tonight, I opened this document frustrated with the exhaustion, hours, aches, all. And it is always true no one asks what you need to be asked. I think. Other things occur.

Dad says Grandma, who she would be if she were ever alive, left for California two days before the [. ] of Grandpa. He and Sidney begged her not to leave and she left, which is so cruel. I have that as a bad tooth and the story doesn't even end with me. He posits she just had given up. But in her giving up, she left Grandpa's death to the kids, which a mother should not do. She smoked with COPD to accelerate her death. A death feels like a hole right now. An exit means a tear, This is how euclidian geometry works. To breach a space you must tear it. What is fun about this is that there is no tear, there is only space and everything inside it for its limited time. What information is for whom and why? Even the random Tinder conversations get bits of me that are nocturnal, unabashed, unbequem. How do I presume?

I have my exhaustion today and I want to be home. I do not feel so excited to go back to Vienna yet which is lucky for me. I want to be nearer my family. The status of my friends does haunt me but the story of the world already taught me to expect this. Start a Substack and everyone is pulled into a tighter hug? Unimportant things go. Attention is its own material and there is not enough of it. I am maybe curious about buying more or selling out.

Contrapoints has been keeping a dream journal and deciphered that most of her dream landscapes are aquariums or indoor pools. She learned this by paying attention. She does not know what the dreams mean, but in the blink of awaking, when the sleep is still heavy, the feelings are clearer. I cannot believe that every paragraph I have written has been the labor of my father letting me survive. I write to keep his family dead. I will not let him go like they let him go, becuase of the seed I was born with. The thing I guard is molten or, whatever, whatever. I represent it in the relationships I lead.

Molly is here from Vienna, in my childhood house. It is still my house. It is strange and not strange and I announce it is strange to be appropriate. Bettina is not near me and it feels so nice. Is this why I am so tired? Notice I am still writing trying to write something else. My poetry people who are smarter than me will caution me to write what I write and not what I don't write, but I want to call them on the bullshit of it, in the way that some voices are not pretty when they sing. To children all stories are worth telling and to adults no. To me in this space, of the paragraph, all stories are worth telling. I have the commodity of attention to know this is true.

Driving around at JFK and I did not mind that much. I was afraid a little bit of the drive because I am not a fan of the cars. I am upset about something but it is not being given to me, which is exciting in its own right because it proves I can never be bored if I work harder at paying attention to everything. Maybe I can fall asleep dreaming of transit.

Getting coffee with Jarel in Berlin. The supermarket. I liked his face and I was so alone. It has been long enough that nostalgia is taking the place of the details. Words feel strange because some people cannot even agree on a color being the same, so what is a mother? I was looking at Jarel on the phone or my dad's dead parents were looking at Jarel through the cells just dying. I will not supplant wonder with another thing. I cannot figure out what a variable is. Things feel hazy, monumental, and psychedelic behind me. I can barely stand to look at this screen as moments surge and bubble up and abate and abscond. A beautiful thing will save me later. But I will keep trying to write about the things which do not grab my attention, and not because I fear being forgotten.

Humanity is a story, a tapestry, and not one person has the obligation to weave a coherent one. Just to focus on your thread and get it to the next stitch, next to another, next to another, and. Write the story well to abolish the end. If the story is 1,000,000 pieces no one will ever pick up or has picked up, then is that still a story or will the word burst? I am still wondering about Jarel with my headache. My headache is ripples in pond-memory.

Not even the five letter name, which whoever I become may not immediately recall, can quite find me. I'll be more concept than boy these days to fit my lungs into this human box. A few adjectives are ridges of weather over the country of my self. Which is just stupid enough to mean. I might fortify behind a few activities and values and make a long list of everything so far and see what sticks, like spaghetti at the wall. I fear I will be a worse parent because I still think I am so important, but I do not know what I know so hope is a viable prognosis and I will [. .] and enlightenment will do exactly what it needs to do.

Ending is symptomatic of form. Things just happen to stop is that. The effect of that is all the human bits I orbit poetry around. The nature of a thing ceasing feels supernova in the writing. And gasses gather back together and form clouds and stars come back, maybe. I will be here and there. I am still possibly a little frustrated and I may not forgive myself for everything but I will let the fear nestle deeper inside of curiosity and,

Jordi asked me, "hey cutie, how are you doing?" and I thought he did not like me. I told Miquel I dreamed of him because I see his face all of the time. Looking at my little dog reminded me of the safety of the sleeping I did next to him. The sleepy body. Sleepy bims. My back is touching Lorenz's back and the first music is the human breath repeating. Is repetition carnal as Charlie said? The mechanisms of repetition are possible more salient than the effects. I will be in that room for a few more months and have other exhaustions. This is what I wanted to say instead of sleeping. Miquel says I make him less lonely and Dan says he is glad to know me. I am drinking the typing and turning into breathing. The fingers in process, even my eyes drawn across this page. I don't share a lot with most people and I do feel fine with that. Now I will try to sleep again.

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mystiika · 3 years

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re; mythos children of hades

part of the reason hades is known to have so few children is that he’s often regarded as an infertile god, as a god of the dead should, by his very nature, be incapable of fathering children. obviously i don’t deem that the case in my personal portrayal but yeah ! that’s likely why this list is as short as it is. a large majority of the info i’m also getting from the orphic hymns.

tl;dr — melinoë & macaria are hades’ children while the erinyes, zagreus, & plutus are not.

m e l i n o ë

melinoë is a chthonic nymph or goddess who appears exclusively within the orphic hymns. she presides over propitiations offered to the ghosts of the dead. she’s said to roam the earth at night, accompanied by a procession of ghosts, terrorizing mortals in various ways & could drive them insane if she so chose. melinoë seems to be related to the moon, & was not someone whose attention you would want to draw. it’s also said that the only reason for her to be mentioned is to placate her, by showing that her nature is known & recognized, thus averting the harm she is capable of causing.

melinoë was conceived when zeus disguised himself as hades, & slept with persephone on the shore of the cocytos, one of the five rivers that run through the realm of the dead. other tellings say that she is persephone’s daughter by both hades & zeus, who are aspects of each other in orphic lore. as a result she’s depicted as having limbs that are partly black & partly white, a manifestation of her dual chthonic & heavenly nature.

"melinoe, saffron-veiled, terrene, who from phersephone dread venerable queen, mixt with zeus kronion, arose, near where kokytos' mournful river flows; when, under plouton's semblance, zeus divine deceived with guileful arts dark phersephone. hence, partly black thy limbs & partly white, from plouton dark, from zeus ethereal bright. thy coloured members, men by night inspire when seen in spectred forms, with terrors dire; now darkly visible, involved in night, perspicuous now they meet the fearful sight. khthonion queen, expel wherever found the soul's mad fears to earth's remotest bound; with holy aspect on our incense shine, & bless thy mystics, & the rites divine " — orphic hymn 71 to melinoë ( trans. taylor )

in short, hades is not her father by blood but for all intents & purposes, she is still his daughter & he treats her as such.

m a c a r i a

while macaria more well-known than melinoë ( among the public rather than scholars ), she’s actually really only mentioned in the suda, a byzantine encyclopedia that was compiled sometime in the 900s c.e. in this, it states she is a daughter of hades while her mother is unnamed. as a result i choose to assume that the mother is persephone, making her persephone & hades only child born of them & only them.

macaria is the physical embodiment of a peaceful, blessed death & thus known as the goddess of the “blessed death”, rather than a violent one, & she would escort the soul in question to elysium, rather than hades or anyone else. even today, the word makaritis ( blessed one ) is used in greece to describe someone that has passed away.

"makaria ( blessed ) death. a daughter of haides. & a proverb : ‘go to blessedness’, instead of go to misery & utter destruction. or ‘go to blessedness’ is said by euphemism. since even the dead are called ‘blessed ones.’" — suidas s.v. makariai ( trans. suda on line ); byzantine greek lexicon 10th century c.e

she also shared her name with a daughter of heracles, who offered her life in sacrifice to persephone. as a result, they’re often discussed together.

t h e e r i n y e s

the erinyes ( also known as the furies ) are the three goddesses of earthly wrath. they preside over vengeance & retribution who punished men for crimes against the natural order. they were particularly concerned with homicide, unfilial conduct, offenses against the gods, & perjury. while they were sometimes represented as daughters of hades ( such as in orphic hymns 29 & 70 or statius, thebaid 12.557 & 11.47 ), it wasn’t the most common concept. in one source they’re also listed as poena’s children. the usual account, however, describes them as earth-born, being the child of gaia by the blood of ouranos. the next most popular option is as children of nyx. either way, hades is not generally the go-to. personally? without a doubt i think poena makes the most sense as a mother but that’s just me. i mean she’s the personification of retribution, vengeance, recompense, punishment & penalty for the crime of murder & manslaughter.

z a e g r u s

there’s really only two different origins about who zagreus is. most commonly, persephone’s child & fathered by zeus ( who seduced persephone as a dragon ) rather than hades. there was one origin from an aeschylus fragment ( with no context ) that says the father was hades but in every other depiction, the father was zeus. following this putative understanding of zeus fathering him, as in orphic tradition, zaegrus’ birth & subsequent death both pre-date persephone’s marriage with hades. the only other time that we know of where zagreus is referred to as being hades’ son is in supergiant’s hades which tends to confuse people but for all intents & purposes, congratulations hades because you are not the father.

as for zagreus himself, he’s a deity who is mainly only mentioned in the orphic hymns. he was generally believed to be the original incarnation of the olympian god dionysos. in this original incarnation, whether out of jealousy, anger, or both, hera had the titans attack him & rip him to pieces as an infant. the story of his conception, his death & rebirth is most notably recounted in the dionysiaca ( a set of 48 books compiled by one nonnos in the early 500s c.e ).

p l u t u s

there are some depictions that say plutus is hades’ child due to his name but in actuality he is the child of demeter & iason. this would make him persephone’s brother rather than her son. & just as hades/pluton is the god of the wealth of the earth, plutus is a god of wealth in his own right, coming from the same root as “pluto”. officially he’s the god of wealth & agricultural bounty though the wealth aspect was added much later & originally was simply god of agricultural bounty.

#melinoe #macaria #the furies #zaegrus #plutus #metas — the gap between understanding & misunderstanding can best be bridged by thought #the greek pantheon — παρ' όλα αυτά είμαστε οικογένεια #greek mythology explained — unripe grape gets sweet as honey‚ at a slow pace #hades. character study — knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom

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yjwhatif · 3 years

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With the semi/cryptic confirmation of Ed and Barts relationship in the series I have a question:

Do you think everyone knows about them (in world) or do you think they’re keeping it secret from some?

It’s just a thought that’s been in my head recently. It is most likely fuelled by the whole drama of G&B not being able to depict a “specific character” (it’s definitely Bart) as gay. They’ve had to hide the relationship from their audience - because of ridiculous reasons - but there are still moments that bring up the question - Are they? Before the reveals from AskGreg, I kinda thought- well they are clearly not together yet, but perhaps they both have feelings for one another and are just waiting for the other to make the next move because they’re nervous idiots who don’t want to have read the situation wrong — all while their friends are like - seriously guys? just get together already. Kinda like they did in s1 with Wally and Artemis - and I guess early Supermartian as well - which I would have been okay with... though with the likelihood of there being at least another two year time skip you’d probably have missed the getting together moment - which would kinda suck. Anyway. With the information about the chances being they were supposed to clearly be in a relationship throughout S3 — which makes the whole structuring of ILLUSIONS just make sense — it’s got me viewing their moments with a whole new energy. Also, I saw this post by Greg —

And let me just clarify, I have no idea if this is actually referencing the Ed and Bart stuff, it might not be (probably isn't). This is purely me speculating.

My reading of this is they got told they couldn’t depict Bart as gay pretty late on and that specifically affected ILLUSIONS where they likely intended to confirm the relationship with that first shot - the kiss on the cheek moment. Even now that moment is just odd - because it’s there but it’s not - because technically there is no actual kiss… which I think is absolutely the point. It plants the seed without actually breaking any rules - all by keeping the momentum but removing the specific kiss frame. It’s the only moment that I feel is explicit in saying they are in a relationship - everything else you can just read into and imply there’s something - but they technically don’t confirm anything.

The whole thing is actually quite interesting - despite the reasoning for it being totally ridiculous. By keeping/showing what they did... People notice it. People talk about it. People reflect on it. More people talk about it. People writing. Make. Create. Discuss it. An entire audience is formed who want and support it. It’s a whole thing now because people noticed it and generated a positive response to it - and that was before all the AskGreg information. The whole reason YJ got a season 3 is because the fans fought to get it back. Enough people talked about it - and kept talking about it - to convince TPTB that the show should come back. Greg and Brandon know this. They know the power the fans have and maybe they hoped that power would help them again in freeing Bart from these ridiculous restrictions. #letbartoutofthecloset

Obviously, we can't know until S4 is released whether G&B got the permission to confirm Bart's sexuality the way they envisioned - but maybe the responses that came during the release of 3b were enough to convince TPTB that they were fighting a losing battle. But who knows, people in power can be very stubborn at times, so we will just have to see what we get. Fingers crossed they eased up though - and not just because of the Ed/Bart relationship (which I am obviously a fan of -- it's fine if not everyone is) - but because these restrictions on LGBTQ+ content shouldn't be a thing and need to stop -- there is just no validity in them.

Anyhow. despite their not being allowed to officially confirm the relationship, Greg's comment about Ed's having a boyfriend they can't name basically confirms the fact without technically breaking any rules again. Masterfully done Wiesman. With this, it implies the pair are in fact dating during S3 which brings us back to the original question... but who knows??

With the comments of Virgil during ILLUSIONS, it's easy to assume their friends do in fact know. They also seem to have no problem being close and interacting with one another whilst in the presence of others -- that is, except for one moment...

Ever since the first time I saw this episode (ELDER WISDOM) I have always found this moment strange - because Ed seems to get kinda awkward when Barry comes to check on Bart. (Or that's how I see it at least.) He realises Flash is standing there and immediately pulls his head down averting his gaze -- almost like he doesn't want to be seen by the elder. But why? Does Barry not know about the pair -- or maybe he doesn't know about Bart and Ed thinks their current closeness is too revealing -- who's to say Bart's even fully out to the world yet -- who's to say either of them are? We certainly don't since we weren't allowed to be shown. We can't know until we know - so until then we can play the speculation game while we wait.

Bart is certainly a bit of a secret keeper when it comes to being himself. I'm still convinced the Bart we see onscreen is merely his interpretation of what he thinks people expect from a speedster in this time. We saw 'real' Bart, he was snarky and cynical and nothing like the Bart we've had for the past two seasons. He said it himself - he's playing a character - and I don't think he knows how to break out of it - not while the possibility exists that it might hurt those he's grown to care about. Bart wants to be seen a certain way to avoid acknowledging the truth of the past - if people see him as happy and smiley, then no one will question him on things he doesn't want to talk about. The problem with that is you can't hide yourself forever - cracks begin to form and eventually, the truth comes out whether you want it to or not. So who knows how comfortable Bart is revealing any of his true self to those he cares about. Maybe his relationship with Ed will be the thing that finally helps him find comfort in being himself, whilst also trusting others to still accept him as himself... and maybe getting him that bit of therapy he really needs.

This brings us to Eduardo… First, can I just say it made me so happy to see Greg’s confirmation of Ed being gay - though it is slightly annoying that he was robbed of his explicit onscreen reveal in S3 thanks to the drama with Bart. His whole relationship to his powers in S2 to S3 fits the representation of coming to terms with your sexuality/identity from a very negative point of view. Feeling like it’s something that needs fixing or needs to be “cured” - to then finding the light and freedom in accepting yourself for you. His growth between seasons is brilliant. He understands the hate and insecurity the teens are feeling because he felt it himself. He does all he can to help them because he never felt he got that help when he needed it - and no one deserves to feel worse for being who they are. Obviously, the things he talks about are framed in the context of dealing with/accepting the meta-gene - yet there are certain moments where it seems he’s saying more than that…

All of which got me wondering - why did Ed originally runaway? It certainly wasn’t because of the meta-abilities he did not yet have. All he’s ever said on the subject was he thought he wanted to be with his father - the man it seems he barely had a relationship with. No, I think Ed has been running from himself for a long time and his dad just happened to be an actual direction for him to aim for. The way he speaks about his wanting to be “cured” and “praying to get rid of his powers” suggests an upbringing around religion and traditional ideas of there being a ‘normal/proper’ way to be — while anything that doesn’t fit that way is treated as other or something that needs to be changed or 'fixed'. Maybe he ran to avoid being found out and run the risk of being ostracised by those he loved. Or maybe he was found out and leaving wasn’t entirely his choice*. If this was the case, I can certainly imagine him not wanting to come out to his dad for fear of his reaction and completely losing all chance of that father-son relationship they’re both trying so hard to keep. It can seem easier to live in secret than risk the reality of loss. So while the meta-gene likely wasn’t the main thing he was angry about in S2, it was able to become a physical thing he could blame and focus his anger on - without having to think about where his issues truly lied… Though with a bit of time it also became the thing he was comfortable conveying his feelings through...

“I’ve learned to accept, even love my meta-abilities”

I love this line so much and it’s all because of the delivery by Freddy Rodrigues. There is the slightest hint of a pause before he says “meta-abilities”, which gives the impression he was about to say something else before then remembering himself and who he was talking to. Then there’s the small inflecion he put on “love”, which makes it sound like it’s the first time he’s heard himself say the words out loud. I don’t hear him talking about the gene - I hear him talking about finally accepting himself - all of himself - for the first time in maybe ever and finally feeling happy because of it. I hear growth... From being the angry 14-year-old skater who just wanted to run away and escape any way he could. To the 16-year-old councillor/Outsider jumping straight into the danger to protect and inspire those who need it. Both he and Bart are such strong characters with so much more to be seen - especially when it comes to the insecurities which lie behind their masks. They both compliment each other pretty perfectly - both powers-wise and personality-wise - meaning while they try to hide themself from others, I don't think it'll take long for them to realise they can't hide from each other.

Anywho, that’s all the speculatary nonsense I’ve got for today. This turned into such a patchwork of vaguely linkable thoughts I’ve had which barely relate to the one I started with - but that is usually how it goes. Take it as you will…

Also, completely unrelated to YJ, but Bi Tim Drake now exists in dc canon which is really cool - seeing all of the joy it’s sparked has really given me something to smile about this week… There is hope after all. 🌈

— LB ⚡️☀️

* OK so here’s a little random snapshot into the chaos of my mind— as I was writing the Ed stuff I had a scene pop into my head of Ed finally -for whatever reason- having to tell his dad that he didn’t leave his abuelo’s home - he got kicked out. His dads confused about this and asks Why? What did you do? And Ed’s like Nothing… I didn’t do anything wrong… he just… found out something. So Seniors like Found out what Eduardo? And Ed’s getting really nervous now because he doesn’t want to say it - That I, um… I’m… Senior step a fraction closer as he picks up on Ed’s anxiety but remains an appropriate distance - Son? Then after a tensening silence he finally says it - sounding the most vulnerable he has ever been - I’m gay… The silence is there again, heavy and unnerving, neither saying a word. Ed can’t move as he’s lock in his elders unreadable glare. Expecting the worse his head drops to take in the floor - anything that isn’t the disappointment ahead - he feels the urge to disappear burning up inside him - consuming him. Then just as he’s about to escape he’s suddenly grounded by a steadying hand rooting itself on his shoulder. Tentatively he lifts his gaze to witness his father, there, with nothing but love and support in his eyes - Mijo. The clamping in his chest dissipates as all the tension escapes at once, along with the breath he hadn’t realised he was holding. Ed embraces his dad and the elder embraces his son. Together. A family.

Anyway. That’s probably a load of rubbish but hey my minds full of it… but basically I really want to see a tender moment between Ed and his dad. For whatever reason. Something where Ed’s in a vulnerable state and in need of some emotional support from his father - and without hesitation his father steps up - because that’s what we haven’t seen from them yet. It would perfectly portray the strength of their relationship as father and son - despite their previous struggles - and prove that Senior is willing to support his son no matter the situation as the father - not just the scientist. Its the final step in their healing journey and I wanna see it so bad!!

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ashesandhackles · 4 years

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Harry And Personal Conflict: A Meta On Evolving Dynamic With Ron and Hermione

One of my last metas on Harry was how his abuse at the Dursleys informed who he is as a person and a lot of his main personality traits. This time, I want to explore Harry's relationship with conflict, mostly in regard to his best friends - Ron and Hermione.

First things first, because of his abusive upbringing where he is constantly in conflict with his caregivers, conflict is seen as Bad Thing when we first meet him as a 11 year old. And it informs how he reacts to both Ron and Hermione at first. He instantly relates to Ron because Ron is an underdog - a boy who feels neglected and passed over in his large and boisterous family. Harry shares his own experience of neglect with Ron and they both bond instantly.

His initial impression of Hermione is that she has a "bossy sort of voice" . The bossiness is an important characterstic to his impression of her - she reminds him of an authority figure and he does not particularly take to her as easily as he does Ron. Before the troll incident, he is frequently annoyed by her interventions because "he can't believe anyone would be so interfering". It's her vulnerability and the fact that she may be in danger that makes Harry, and by extension Ron, go after her. And she pays it back in full with a demonstration of loyalty to them in front of people she wants to impress: teachers. This sets the tone of his friendship with Ron and Hermione.

There is sense of easiness to his friendship with Ron, especially in earlier books that he doesn't quite share with Hermione. This is a bit gendered as well, of course. His relationship with Hermione evolves as Ron's own equation with two of them changes, more specifically Ron's cognisance of his romantic feelings for Hermione. So how does this inform his relationship with personal conflict?

Let's look at it Book wise.

Book 1-4: Since Harry tends to see All Conflict As Bad, when Hermione becomes his friend, he tends to ignore traits of her that he particularly doesn't take to. Specifically her argumentativeness - which he usually leaves Ron to deal with. For example, look at when Hermione drags him off to the kitchens in GOF. When he realises what this is about, he nudges Ron, and Ron does the protesting: "Hermione, you are trying to rope us into that spew stuff again!".

Often, you can say he is amused by Ron's more ..let's say colourful.. reactions to Hermione being overbearing. So when Ron and him are not speaking and Hermione gets a Quidditch term wrong, it causes him "a pang to imagine Ron's expression of he could have heard Hermione talking about Wonky Faints". It's that deeply ingrained into the dynamic.

While Ron acts buffer and protects Harry from stepping into a potential conflict ("skip the lecture", "don't nag" he tells her), Harry's world view remains quite the same. Part of Harry's growing up is integrating conflicting points of view and gaining nuance. For example, he can't understand why someone like Snape, who seems to hate him so much, can also save his life at the end of Philosopher's Stone. This is his first venture into trying to integrate two conflicting things about a person into nuance. Dumbledore gives him a very easily digestible story, one that appeals to his ideal of his father and Harry is sated.

Again, Harry's world view is tested when he finds out that he relates with Tom Riddle - for their "strange likenesses". He doth protest too much at Dumbledore's office: "I don't think I am like him! I am Gryffindor!". And Dumbledore offers him a wisdom nugget: "It's our choices which define who we are" (paraphrasing). Harry is uncomfortable that he empathises with Tom Riddle, his parents' murderer, at this point in the story.

In the first four books, his only proper personal conflict has been with Ron.

It is depressing to think about in these terms - but Ron is Harry's first experience of unconditional love (we can even put Hagrid here, but he is not the one who spends most time with Harry). And when Ron and him fight, Harry is so hurt by the prospect that he proceeds to abandon Ron before Ron abandons him. (the whole chucking a "Potter stinks" badge at him and making a jab about having a scar is what he wants, or the fight in DH where he yells "then leave! Pretend you have gotten over your spattergoit and have your mummy feed you up"). It's an interesting defense mechanism and he feels "corrosive hatred" towards Ron during these times because Ron and him aren't supposed to be like this. Ron is a certainty in his life. It's also why when Ron comes back, Harry either doesn't need him to apologise (as in GOF) or quickly forgives him in DH - although I do think Harry thinks the locket bit was punishment enough. But even without the whole locket, I think Harry has trouble holding Ron accountable in general beyond few slaps on the wrist - especially if Ron and he are on good terms.

5th Book: This is the transition point for Golden Trio friendship. Harry has come back from an immensely traumatising night at the graveyard and his PTSD isolates him from his best friends. This is also the point where Ron, especially after GOF, is aware of his romantic feelings for Hermione ("the perfume is unusual Ron", Hermione tells him in this book). So in this book, we often see Ron and Hermione on one side, with Harry on the other.

Ron is unwilling (quite like Harry in that respect) to engage him in a direct conflict, but he is also unwilling to shield him from Hermione's nagging in this book. This is why, OOTP is the book where you see Harry ignore or avoid Hermione and lie to her more than usual to avoid conflict. For example, he tells her that Snape thinks he can carry on Occlumency once he got the basics - that is categorically not what happened. Or the entire day he spends ignoring Hermione's warnings about breaking into Umbridge's office. (The description here is comical - about Hermione vehemently hissing so much that Seamus Finnigan is checking his cauldron for leaks. ) If he cannot lie to her or avoid her, at the end of the rope, he will treat her to display of his frightening temper.

Interestingly, OOTP is also the book that his world view goes through a tremendous upheaval: mainly, his ideal of his father and having empathy for Snape. It is unnerving for Harry to see Snape being the "boy who cried in the corner" when his father shouts at a cowering woman. Similarly unnerving is that his intense empathy for him - "he knew exactly what Snape felt when his father taunted him and judging by what he had seen, his father was every bit as arrogant as Snape always told him".

While he is placated that his father grew out of it, this memory of his father being a bully is something he cannot bear to watch again in DH. Few chapters later, he grins at Ron "sweeping his hair" back to make it look more windswept, just like his father - suggesting that Harry is beginning to integrate two conflicting things he knew about his father: from the people who loved him vs the people he was cruel to.

6th Book onwards: It's interesting to me that his better appreciation for Hermione comes after OOTP (one, because she is the one who challenged the whole Ministry plan and she followed him into a trap knowing it was one anyway) but also the timing of it is in line with Harry having a more nuanced understanding of his father. He struggled to hold conflicting information about him into one cohesive person - the boy who was a bully vs the man who joins Order of Phoenix to fight a war he could very well have sat out. The pedestal crashing helped Harry gain nuance (he thinks of his father and mother with pride in HBP - of them walking into an arena with head held high). HBP also sets up his deeper understanding with Snape in DH. There is lovely meta by about this by thedreamersmusing. Read it here. HBP is also the book he feels "sorry" for Voldemort and also feels "reluctant admiration" for him - both of things he is less defensive about.

And this nuance informs his relationship with conflicts - especially the kind he has with Hermione. He is more confrontational with her and does not lie or sneak around her as much as he did in OOTP in the Half Blood Prince. ("Finished? Or do you want to see if it does back flips?" He asks her when she takes the book from him to check if it's jinxed. Or the "I hope you enjoy yourself" he calls out irritably when she declares intention to find out who HBP is. And "do you want to rub it in Hermione? How do you think I feel now?" He tells her when she says she was right about HBP).

The fact that he is willing to be confrontational with her is a big step in his character - a step up from his unregulated outbursts in OOTP, which is a function of him not knowing how to put his anger across in normal ways. He is also more willing to stand up for her in front of Ron too - "You could say sorry" he tells Ron bluntly. This is in contrast to his more quiet standing up for her in POA: "Can't you give her a break?" Harry asked him quietly. In POA, he lets the subject drop after Ron flatly refuses. Here, he presses on more : "What did you have to imitate her for?" "She laughed at moustache!" "So did I, it's the stupidest thing I have ever seen".

His relationship with Ron is an interesting contrast to his relationship with Hermione, which functionally teaches a very important lesson for an abused child who thought all conflicts are bad: That his friendship with her is challenging, and frustrating, filled with conflicts but their love for each other isn't disputed. It's a very important thing for brain development in general - to hold conflicting information in one space. The defense mechanism abused children do to avoid this is called splitting.

So, Ron allows Harry to be the age he is: a teenager and it's foundation for his further development, and Hermione teaches him how to be an adult, and therefore, spurs his growth. (In esoteric terms, if you look at Ron and Hermione as proxy parents - Ron is the Mother archetype, the one who offers unconditional love. Hermione is the Father archetype - one who demands best of him, and guides him).

Additional reading: Harry, Prongs and Prince - Harry's Inner Struggles For Forging An Identity. By u/metametatron4

Harry Identifies, and Reluctantly Admires Snape Even Before The Prince's Tale by thedreamersmusing

#harry james potter #hp meta #harry potter character analysis #hp character analysis #golden trio #golden trio analysis #harry x ron x hermione #harry and ron #harry and hermione #ron x Hermione #severus snape #james Potter #harry potter #tom riddle #albus percival wulfric brian dumbledore #albus dumbledore #metas #harry potter and order of phoenix #harry Potter and half blood Prince

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millenniumblog · 3 years

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[ID: A chart describing the core values of each of the nine Enneagram personality types with YuGiOh characters correlated to each of the types.]

YuGiOh Enneagram Analysis, Part #1

Please note that this is the “boring” informational post about Enneagram with the Types listed and explained as well as a few other things. The next post is what has the actual, in-depth character profiles promised!

Introduction & Motivation

Over the past several months, I have been trying to analyze my strengths and weaknesses as a writer and learn more. I have been writing fanfiction since I was a little kid, making my first FF.net account in 2003 when I would have been twelve years old. Even before that, I was a lurker and wrote fics to share with my childhood best friend on paper or floppy discs.

YuGiOh came into my life at some point shortly thereafter. I know this, because I spent my thirteenth birthday in a comic book shop, mostly watching some of my male friends play the trading card game. I had some of the cards, but I was never much of a player, unable to keep up with the seemingly rapid rule changes. Besides that, I was always way more interested in the story and characters than I was in the card game. I remember I even wanted to call “YuGiOh cards” “Duel Monsters” instead to make it seem a little closer to tween-y LARPing.

Eventually, I gave up on collecting cards or trying to ply the game. I felt that while my male friends didn’t mind me being around when they played, they weren’t extremely interested in helping me learn or keep up. I felt I had other strengths, so I started carrying around a notebook even more than I already did. I started my fledgling forays into online fandom. And YuGiOh was a big part of the beginning of that.

I can’t remember posting any YuGiOh fic in particular, and I’m sure that if I had it would make me cringe now. What I do remember is reading some and also spending a lot of time lying on my bed, headphones plugged into a small purple stereo, listening to the first of the two American-released CDs with YuGiOh-inspired music on them. In particular, the last three tracks were pieces of music from the original score composed for the 4Kids dub, which is - for some reason - different from the original Japanese music.

During that time, I would fantasize and conjure my own YuGiOh plots in my head, most of which were focused on the Ancient Egyptian and more spooky, spiritual, and horror themes in the show. I was really fascinated with the reincarnation angle, though my understanding of and opinions on how that works have grown with time.

Years went by, and I didn’t think about YuGiOh much at all. Then, something happened in 2018. I don’t know what got in my head, but it was like all the joy I once found in thinking about the YuGiOh characters came back in a giddy conversation with my childhood best friend. Then, for a little while, it wouldn’t leave me alone.

I started writing for the fandom then, and after several detours, I’m trying to get back in the groove of it.

My approach to the tone of YuGiOh-fanning is that it’s a bit serious, but it’s also with a tongue placed in my cheek because of how incomprehensible or silly the plot can be on a meta level. Sometimes, it almost brings tears to my eyes by being so over-the-top about something that, in the real world, would make no sense at all. But the drama, in the context of the universe, somehow rings true.

I think that’s all owing to how most of the primary characters are just... really freaking great characters.

It has often puzzled me. Like, did Takahashi do all this layering on purpose? Is it really there, or did earnest fanon just make it seem like it? And, as a person, I am always here for a good fan-and-canon symbiosis.

This post is going to be, from here on, an effort to match the YuGiOh characters to the 9 Enneagram Personality Types. I am writing this for my own benefit as I continue to work on my pet YuGiOh fanfiction project, It’s Always Sunny in Domino City, which is a mixture of YGOTAS-vibes-and-concepts taken seriously and a sincere take on fanfiction for the actual canon. It’s dramedy about a sizeable chunk of the main cast a few years post-canon with some canon divergence such as the Memory World arc not yet and possibly never-happening. If that sounds like something you’d like, I would humbly request you check it out!

Either way, this will be an in-depth character analysis cheatsheet for all of the characters above, based on my observations, opinions, and feelings. I invite discussion, but it’s fine if we need to agree to totally disagree!

If you are interested and enjoy what’s below the Read More and in the coming second post, then you are welcome to utilize the character analyses to aid you in your own fanwork!

Enneagram

What is Enneagram, and why am I using it?

Enneagram is a personality categorization system that one might compare to the somewhat better-known MBTI. However, in the words of excellent writing-advice YouTuber, Abbie Emmons:

MBTI shows us how we behave.

Enneagram shows us what we believe.

I will be referencing Abbie’s video Using The ENNEAGRAM To Write CONFLICTED CHARACTERS and her free Enneagram-cheatsheet, available in the description of the linked video. Whether it’s before you continue reading or after, if you’re interested in writing, I would highly recommend you check out her channel!

The Enneagram system has nine basic personality types that overlap and interact in really interesting ways. It is not a hard science, and it’s not a horoscope. Instead, it’s supposed to be “based on conventional wisdom and modern psychology.” All I can say is that with every set of characters I’ve tried it with, it works! Once you get the hang of it, it feels kind of like ~✰~magic~✰~!

Below, I will list Abbie’s simplified definitions of each of the personality types, in order:

Type 1: The Reformer

The Rational, Idealistic Type:

Principled, Purposeful, Self-Controlled, and Perfectionistic

Basic Fear: Of being corrupt/evil, defective

Basic Desire: To be good, to have integrity, to be balanced

Key Motivations: Want to be right, to strive higher and improve everything, to be consistent with their ideals, to justify themselves, to be beyond criticism so as not to be condemned by anyone.

Type 2: The Helper

The Caring, Interpersonal Type:

Generous, Demonstrative, People-Pleasing, and Possessive

Basic Fear: Of being unwanted, unworthy of being loved

Basic Desire: To feel loved

Key Motivations: Want to be loved, to express their feelings for others, to be needed and appreciated, to get others to respond to them, to vindicate their claims about themselves.

Type 3: The Achiever

The Success-Oriented, Pragmatic Type:

Adaptable, Excelling, Driven, and Image-Conscious

Basic Fear: Of being worthless

Basic Desire: To feel valuable and worthwhile

Key Motivations: Want to be affirmed, to distinguish themselves from others, to have attention, to be admired, and to impress others.

Type 4: The Individualist

The Sensitive, Introspective Type:

Expressive, Dramatic, Self-Absorbed, and Temperamental

Basic Fear: That they have no identity or personal significance

Basic Desire: To find themselves and their significance (to create an identity)

Key Motivations: Want to express themselves and their individuality, to create and surround themselves with beauty, to maintain certain moods and feelings, to withdraw to protect their self-image, to take care of emotional needs before attending to anything else, to attract a "rescuer."

Type 5: The Investigator

The Intense, Cerebral Type:

Perceptive, Innovative, Secretive, and Isolated

Basic Fear: Being useless, helpless, or incapable

Basic Desire: To be capable and competent

Key Motivations: Want to possess knowledge, to understand the environment, to have everything figured out as a way of defending the self from threats from the environment.

Type 6: The Loyalist

The Committed, Security-Oriented Type:

Engaging, Responsible, Anxious, and Suspicious

Basic Fear: Of being without support and guidance

Basic Desire: To have security and support

Key Motivations: Want to have security, to feel supported by others, to have certitude and reassurance, to test the attitudes of others toward them, to fight against anxiety and insecurity.

Type 7: The Enthusiast

The Busy, Variety-Seeking Type:

Spontaneous, Versatile, Acquisitive, and Scattered

Basic Fear: Of being deprived and in pain

Basic Desire: To be satisfied and content—to have their needs fulfilled

Key Motivations: Want to maintain their freedom and happiness, to avoid missing out on worthwhile experiences, to keep themselves excited and occupied, to avoid and discharge pain.

Type 8: The Challenger

The Powerful, Dominating Type:

Self-Confident, Decisive, Willful, and Confrontational

Basic Fear: Of being harmed or controlled by others

Basic Desire: To protect themselves (to be in control of their own life and destiny)

Key Motivations: Want to be self-reliant, to prove their strength and resist weakness, to be important in their world, to dominate the environment, and to stay in control of their situation.

Type 9: The Peacemaker

The Easygoing, Self-Effacing Type:

Receptive, Reassuring, Agreeable, and Complacent

Basic Fear: Of loss and separation

Basic Desire: To have inner stability, "peace of mind"

Key Motivations: Want to create harmony in their environment, to avoid conflicts and tension, to preserve things as they are, to resist whatever would upset or disturb them.

Now that you’ve seen all those, what do you think your favorite character is? In YuGiOh or anything else! It works great for original characters and even yourself and your loved ones.

The actual Character Profiles will be in coming post(s), but continue reading if you want me to explain more about how and why the Enneagram is a great personality typing system. #nonspon, or whatever.

The Enneagram Chart

Now, you could just go to the Enneagram Institute’s page on How the System Works, but below I’ll cut it down to only the parts I’m interested in and explain those in a way that helps me.

Unlike in astrology or MBTI, which are both more restrictive in different ways, the relative position of each type matters a bit on the Enneagram chart, because it can be used to visualize a lot of things about a person!

The Basic Chart

The Types are shown in a clockwise fashion with “1″ in the 1 o’clock position on an analog clock. The interior lines mean things, but I have trouble reading it without further delineation.

Centers of Response

Below are two small charts, displayed side-by-side. (If it’s too small, try right-click, open in new tab!)

The chart on the left shows the three “centers.” The “centers” indicate the first ‘processing language’ a person would use to respond to stimuli.

Type 8, Type 9, and Type 1 respond first based on instinct (primal, gut-feeling). If you want to go Freudian, this is from the id.

Type 2, Type 3, and Type 4 respond first based on feelings (social or personal desires, the heart). If you want to go Freudian, this is from the ego.

Type 5, Type 6, and Type 7 respond first based on thoughts (analytical rather than emotional, the head). If you want to go Freudian, this is from the superego.

Remember that, of course, every single type and person engages their instincts, their emotions, and their thoughts at different times and to different degrees, and some of these are learned or changed behaviors. This is about what their innate drive toward that would be.

Likewise, the same “centers” can also be used for the chart on the right. You will notice that all three of these are defined by what is typically considered a negative emotion. This is because this is about a person’s instinctive, not particularly conscious emotional response when they are backed into a corner and deprived of something that is core to the needs of their personality type.

Type 8, Type 9, and Type 1 tend to respond to a threat to their psychic well-being with anger/rage.

Type 2, Type 3, and Type 4 tend to respond to a threat to their psychic well-being with shame.

Type 5, Type 6, and Type 7 tend to respond to a threat to their psychic well-being with fear.

Stress vs. Growth

We all know that there are times when a person isn’t acting like themselves, for better or for worse. Usually, “You’re not acting like yourself,” means that a person is behaving badly. Of course, it’s way easier to withdraw and bristle and defend rather than growing in the midst of adversity. However, it is certainly possible to experience character growth in response to experiences, good and bad. Unlike a lot of other personality typing schemes, the Enneagram has a way to display and predict what stress and growth do to a person.

The Enneagram never suggests that any Type is an island unto itself. Every person contains multitudes, but a person’s Type is likely to remain relatively stable throughout their lives, once they have had a chance to develop any personality at all. This means that when a person is stressed or growing that they do not become the type they emulate. Rather, they are more highly expressing that aspects of their personality that reflect those drives and desires but in a way that is either fraught, sickly, or unwell (in the case of stress), or aspirational, flying-high, and incorporating the hard-lessons into who a person is going to be going forward (in the case of growth). The latter, especially, isn’t a sustainable mode, while a stressed person can become more entrenched in their bad habits and defensive coping mechanisms.

Stress

Note the white, directional arrows. Each number has an arrow point pointing to it and an arrow leading away from it. The point indicates that this is the stress manifestation for the Type at the origin of that arrow. The origin of each arrow indicates the Type being described.

Confused? Let me finally give you a YuGiOh example.

When I was trying to identify the Types of the characters, defining Marik was difficult, because he has a “Yami,” or Dark Side, which has its own personality and will but which is not its own separate soul or person than Marik himself. Rather, it’s a kind of fantasy/magic-assisted personality splintering where Yami Marik is a full manifestation of the negative traits Marik needed to embody to survive.

So, for reference:

When stressed, Type 1 behaves more like Type 4.

When stressed, Type 2 behaves more like Type 8.

When stressed, Type 3 behaves more like Type 9.

When stressed, Type 4 behaves more like Type 2.

When stressed, Type 5 behaves more like Type 7.

When stressed, Type 6 behaves more like Type 3.

When stressed, Type 7 behaves more like Type 1.

When stressed, Type 8 behaves more like Type 5.

When stressed, Type 9 behaves more like Type 6.

Alternatively, you can use these sequences to follow the stress lines:

1-4-2-8-5-7-1

9-6-3-9

Growth

Think of the above-explanation in reverse.

The sequence:

1-7-5-8-2-4-1

9-3-6-9

As a Type 1 grows, they incorporate more positive traits of Type 7.

As a Type 2 grows, they incorporate more positive traits of Type 4.

As a Type 3 grows, they incorporate more positive traits of Type 6.

As a Type 4 grows, they incorporate more positive traits of Type 1.

As a Type 5 grows, they incorporate more positive traits of Type 8.

As a Type 6 grows, they incorporate more positive traits of Type 9.

As a Type 7 grows, they incorporate more positive traits of Type 5.

As a Type 8 grows, they incorporate more positive traits of Type 2.

As a Type 9 grows, they incorporate more positive traits of Type 3.

Wings

The final thing to know about the Enneagram chart for my purposes is about wings. The wing of your personality traits accounts for the complementary and contradictory aspects of your personality. They are the inconsistencies that make you human, predicted and jumped in. Typically, a person is not thought to have both possible wings but one or the other. A wing is one of the two adjacent Types to yours, the number before, or the number after, and it is annotated, for example:

Type 1, Wing 2: 1w2

Type 1, Wing 9: 1w9

Link to Part 2 Here!

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drakonovisny · 3 years

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Okay so listen, your blog is quite literally my favorite ever since I came back to Tumblr.

Also, I'm curious to know how/why you got into Solavellan because I feel like there's such a range on why people like him? Like some people like that he's a super nerd and other people are obsessed with the whole Fen'Harel aspect of him and I just want to know what your thoughts are?

AHHHHHHH I'M SO TOUCHED!!! IT TRULY MEANS A LOT TO ME THAT YOU ENJOY MY BLOG AND I REALLY HOPE THAT IT MAKES YOUR DAYS EVEN A LITTLE BETTER 🥺💗💖

As for the question... *starts vibrating at a frequency that could shatter glass* yes I love Solas the normal amount haha. It's kind of a long story so I'll hide it under the cut.

You see after playing da2 I was obsessed with Fenris and his relationship with Hawke. So when I started playing dai I wasn't planning to getting attached to any other character. In the prologue Solas just kinda gave me weird vibes but the first time he started speaking made me 😳

I continued playing but I didn't really like the gameplay itself and almost dropped the game, the only thing that stopped me was my resolve to get to the portion of the game where Hawke appears and makes a comment about his relationship with Fenris (I looked it up on some forum beforehand I think?)

I didn't know who you can or can't romance so I looked up a no-spoiler guide on dai romances and Solas' entry really intrigued me. It said something about drama and only being available to fem Lavellans which immediately made me curious because it was exactly the character I made 👀 But I was also still considering Josephine, Sera, Blackwall and Cullen, because honestly his appearance was slightly off-putting to me at first. My doubts were gone the moment I went to talk to him at Haven.

You see I have this adhd habit of quickly reading the subtitles and skipping the dialogue immediately, which isn't the best for immersing yourself in charactes. I had no urge to do this when I was going through his dialogues! His voice, his accent, the rythm of his speech completely entranced me. I was listening closely to everything he was saying. I loved that you could ask him so many questions about the Fade and how passionate he was answering them (and all the approval points!). What really sealed the deal for me was the "indomitable focus" flirt line...

I continued playing the game taking him with me everywhere, falling more and more in love with him for his little remarks and approval points for doing small acts of kindness. The Fade kiss scene completely swooped me off my feet cause it was so intense???? and passionate??????? but also him being like "no, we shouldn't" made me more intrigued. Some stories he tells about his journeys made me really emotional, so did his personal quest. Seeing Wisdom die was honestly heartbreaking, his reaction was even more painful ;-;

The balcony scene at first ngl was cringe until they kissed and he called her something pretty in elven and suddenly left??? I was confused until I looked up what he said and he SAID THAT HE LOVED HER AND CALLED HER HIS HEART??????? AND HE KEEPS CALLING HER VHENAN EVERY TIME???????????? ༼;´༎ຶ ۝ ༎ຶ༽

The dance in Halamshiral was pretty dreamy (I didn't really noticed what he said about the ball in the beginning because I was so anxious about everything there lol). His banter with other followers also showed me his sassy smartass side which I also loved. I kept returning to him after every mission hoping to hear more dialogue and stories, but even just "hello" and "vhenan" melted my heart 🥺

So anyways THE BREAK UP FUCKING DESTROYED ME!!!!!! I DIDN'T SEE IT COMING AND IT HIT ME LIKE THAT BUS HIT REGINA GEORGE 😭 Of course I went looking if it was somehow preventable and I accidentally spoiled myself about who he is... THIS WAS SUCH AN EMOTIONAL ROLLERCOASTER I HAD TO TAKE A PAUSE FROM PLAYING THIS GAME FOR A FEW DAYS ಥ‿ಥ

In retrospect a lot of the things that he said before made a lot more sense. And the detail that really stood out to me was that he barely lied for some called a "god of deception", which made me think that there's more to this than it seems.

I was really sad finishing the main game, him leaving and the after credit scene broke my heart... I immediately started playing Trespasser and of course the last dialogue completely obliterated my heart.

The more I thought about it, the more it struck me how much of a well-rounded, dynamic and tragic character he is. Joining the fandom and reading lots of meta made me adore him even more. I can ramble for hours which specific characteristics I love the most in him, but to cut it short and get closer to initial question: I love both the cunning tragic "fallen hero" Fen'Harel aspect and the passionate curious nerd aspect. But to be fully honest I'm a little more into the later, I love soft Solas (づ｡♡‿‿♡｡)づ

#i promised myself not to write too much...#didn't go as planned #warning a lot of unnecessary info here #sorry it took me so much time #anon #thank you for the ask!#solas

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fineillsignup · 5 years

Text

tips for choosing a Chinese name for your OC when you don’t know Chinese

This is a meta for gifset trade with @purple-fury! Maybe you would like to trade something with me? You can PM me if so!

Choosing a Chinese name, if you don’t know a Chinese language, is difficult, but here’s a secret for you: choosing a Chinese name, when you do know a Chinese language, is also difficult. So, my tip #1 is: Relax. Did you know that Actual Chinese People choose shitty names all the dang time? It’s true!!! Just as you, doubtless, have come across people in your daily life in your native language that you think “God, your parents must have been on SOME SHIT when they named you”, the same is true about Chinese people, now and throughout history. If you choose a shitty name, it’s not the end of the world! Your character’s parents now canonically suck at choosing a name. There, we fixed it!

However. Just because you should not drive yourself to the brink of the grave fretting over choosing a Chinese name for a character, neither does that mean you shouldn’t care at all. Especially, tip #2, Never just pick some syllables that vaguely sound Chinese and call it a day. That shit is awful and tbh it’s as inaccurate and racist as saying “ching chong” to mimic the Chinese language. Examples: Cho Chang from Harry Potter, Tenten from Naruto, and most notorious of all, Fu Manchu and his daughter Fah lo Suee (how the F/UCK did he come up with that one).

So where do you begin then? Well, first you need to pick your character’s surname. This is actually not too difficult, because Chinese actually doesn’t have that many surnames in common use. One hundred surnames cover over eighty percent of China’s population, and in local areas especially, certain surnames within that one hundred are absurdly common, like one out of every ten people you meet is surnamed Wang, for example. Also, if you’re making an OC for an established media franchise, you may already have the surname based on who you want your character related to. Finally, if you’re writing an ethnically Chinese character who was born and raised outside of China, you might only want their surname to be Chinese, and give them a given name from the language/culture of their native country; that’s very very common.

If you don’t have a surname in mind, check out the Wikipedia page for the list of common Chinese surnames, roughly the top one hundred. If you’re not going to pick one of the top one hundred surnames, you should have a good reason why. Now you need to choose a romanization system. You’ll note that the Wikipedia list contains variant spellings. If your character is a Chinese-American (or other non-Chinese country) whose ancestors emigrated before the 1950s (or whose ancestors did not come from mainland China), their name will not be spelled according to pinyin. It might be spelled according to Wade-Giles romanization, or according to the name’s pronunciation in other Chinese languages, or according to what the name sounds like in the language of the country they immigrated to. (The latter is where you get spellings like Lee, Young, Woo, and Law.) A huge proportion of emigration especially came from southern China, where people spoke Cantonese, Min, Hakka, and other non-Mandarin languages.

So, for example, if you want to make a Chinese-Canadian character whose paternal source of their surname immigrated to Canada in the 20s, don’t give them the surname Xie, spelled that way, because #1 that spelling didn’t exist when their first generation ancestor left China and #2 their first generation ancestor was unlikely to have come from a part of China where Mandarin was spoken anyway (although still could have! that’s up to you). Instead, name them Tse, Tze, Sia, Chia, or Hsieh.

If you’re working with a character who lives in, or who left or is descended from people who left mainland China in the 1960s or later; or if you’re working with a historical or mythological setting, then you are going to want to use the pinyin romanization. The reason I say that you should use pinyin for historical or mythological settings is because pinyin is now the official or de facto romanization system for international standards in academia, the United Nations, etc. So if you’re writing a story with characters from ancient China, or medieval China, use pinyin, even though not only pinyin, but the Mandarin pronunciations themselves didn’t exist back then. Just... just accept this. This is one of those quirks of having a non-alphabetic language.

(Here’s an “exceptions” paragraph: there are various well known Chinese names that are typically, even now, transliterated in a non-standard way: Confucius, Mencius, the Yangtze River, Sun Yat-sen, etc. Go ahead and use these if you want. And if you really consciously want to make a Cantonese or Hakka or whatever setting, more power to you, but in that case you better be far beyond needing this tutorial and I don’t know why you’re here. Get. Scoot!)

One last point about names that use the ü with the umlaut over it. The umlaut ü is actually pretty critical for the meaning because wherever the ü appears, the consonant preceding it also can be used with u: lu/lü, nu/nü, etc. However, de facto, lots of individual people, media franchises, etc, simply drop the umlaut and write u instead when writing a name in English, such as “Lu Bu” in the Dynasty Warriors franchise in English (it should be written Lü Bu). And to be fair, since tones are also typically dropped in Latin script and are just as critical to the meaning and pronunciation of the original, dropping the umlaut probably doesn’t make much difference. This is kind of a choice you have to make for yourself. Maybe you even want to play with it! Maybe everybody thinks your character’s surname is pronounced “loo as in loo roll” but SURPRISE MOFO it’s actually lü! You could Do Something with that. Also, in contexts where people want to distinguish between u and ü when typing but don’t have easy access to a keyboard method of making the ü, the typical shorthand is the letter v.

Alright! So you have your surname and you know how you want it spelled using the Latin alphabet. Great! What next?

Alright, so, now we get to the hard part: choosing the given name. No, don’t cry, I know baby I know. We can do this. I believe in you.

Here are some premises we’re going to be operating on, and I’m not entirely sure why I made this a numbered list:

Chinese people, generally, love their kids. (Obviously, like in every culture, there are some awful exceptions, and I’ll give one specific example of this later on.)

As part of loving their kids, they want to give them a Good name.

So what makes a name a Good name??? Well, in Chinese culture, the cultural values (which have changed over time) have tended to prioritize things like: education; clan and family; health and beauty; religious devotions of various religions (Buddhism, Taoism, folk religions, Christianity, other); philosophical beliefs (Buddhism, Confucianism, etc) (see also education); refinement and culture (see also education); moral rectitude; and of course many other things as the individual personally finds important. You’ll notice that education is a big one. If you can’t decide on where to start, something related to education, intelligence, wisdom, knowledge, etc, is a bet that can’t go wrong.

Unlike in English speaking cultures (and I’m going to limit myself to English because we’re writing English and good God look at how long this post is already), there is no canon of “names” in Chinese like there has traditionally been in English. No John, Mary, Susan, Jacob, Maxine, William, and other words that are names and only names and which, historically at least, almost everyone was named. Instead, in Chinese culture, you can basically choose any character you want. You can choose one character, or two characters. (More than two characters? No one can live at that speed. Seriously, do not give your character a given name with more than two characters. If you need this tutorial, you don’t know enough to try it.) Congratulations, it is now a name!!

But what this means is that Chinese names aggressively Mean Something in a way that most English names don’t. You know nature names like Rose and Pearl, and Puritan names like Wrestling, Makepeace, Prudence, Silence, Zeal, and Unity? I mean, yeah, you can technically look up that the name Mary comes from a etymological root meaning bitter, but Mary doesn’t mean bitter in the way that Silence means, well, silence. Chinese names are much much more like the latter, because even though there are some characters that are more common as names than as words, the meaning of the name is still far more upfront than English names.

So the meaning of the name is generally a much more direct expression of those Good Values mentioned before. But it gets more complicated!

Being too direct has, across many eras of Chinese history, been considered crude; the very opposite of the education you’re valuing in the first place. Therefore, rather than the Puritan slap you in the face approach where you just name your kid VIRTUE!, Chinese have typically favoured instead more indirect, related words about these virtues and values, or poetic allusions to same. What might seem like a very blunt, concrete name, such as Guan Yu’s “yu” (which means feather), is actually a poetic, referential name to all the things that feathers evoke: flight, freedom, intellectual broadmindness, protection...

So when you’re choosing a name, you start from the value you want to express, then see where looking up related words in a dictionary gets you until you find something that sounds “like a name”; you can also try researching Chinese art symbolism to get more concrete names. Then, here’s my favourite trick, try combining your fake name with several of the most common surnames: 王，李，陈. And Google that shit. If you find Actual Human Beings with that name: congratulations, at least if you did f/uck up, somebody else out there f/ucked up first and stuck a Human Being with it, so you’re still doing better than they are. High five!

You’re going to stick with the same romanization system (or lack thereof) as you’ve used for the surname. In the interests of time, I’m going to focus on pinyin only.

First let’s take a look at some real and actual Chinese names and talk about what they mean, why they might have been chosen, and also some fictional OC names that I’ve come up with that riff off of these actual Chinese names. And then we’ll go over some resources and also some pitfalls. Hopefully you can learn by example! Fun!!!

Let’s start with two great historical strategists: Zhuge Liang and Zhou Yu, and the names I picked for some (fictional) sons of theirs. Then I will be talking about Sun Shangxiang and Guan Yinping, two historical-legendary women of the same era, and what I named their fictional daughters. And finally I’ll be talking about historical Chinese pirate Gan Ning and what I named his fictional wife and fictional daughter. Uh, this could be considered spoilers for my novel Clouds and Rain and associated one-shots in that universe, so you probably want to go and read that work... and its prequels... and leave lots of comments and kudos first and then come back. Don’t worry, I’ll wait.

(I’m just kidding you don’t need to know a thing about my work to find this useful.)

ZHUGE Liang is written 諸葛亮 in traditional Chinese characters and 诸葛亮 in simplified Chinese characters. It is a two-character surname. Two character surnames used to be more common than they are now. When I read Chinese history, I notice that two character surname clans seem to have a bad habit of flying real high and then getting the Icarus treatment if Icarus when his wings melted also got beheaded and had the Nine Familial Exterminations performed on his clan. Yikes. Sooner or later that'll cost ya.

But anyway. Zhuge means “lots of kudzu”, which if you have been to the American south you know is that only way that kudzu comes. Liang means “light, shining” in the sense of daylight, moonlight, etc; and from this literal meaning also such figurative meanings as reveal or clear. (I’m going to talk about words have a primary and secondary meaning in this way because I think it’s important for understanding. It’s just like how in English, ‘run’ has many meanings, but almost of all them are derived from a primary meaning of ‘to move fast via one’s human legs’, if I can be weird for a moment. “Run” as in “home run” comes from that, “run” as in “run in your stocking” comes from that, “run” as in “that’ll run you at least $200″ comes from that. You have to get it straight which is the primary meaning, which is the one that people think of first and they way they get to the secondary meaning.)

“Light” has a similar “enlightenment” concept in Chinese as in English, so the person who chose Zhuge Liang’s name—most likely his father or grandfather—clearly valued learning.

I named my fictional son for Zhuge Liang Zhuge Jing 京. The value or direction I was coming from is that Zhuge Liang has come to the decision that he has to nurture the next generation for the benefit of the land, that he has to remain in the world in a way that he very much did not want to do when he himself was a young man. In this alternate universe, Liu Bei has formed a new Han dynasty and recaptured Luoyang, so when Zhuge Liang’s son is then born he chooses this name Jing which means literally “capital”. This concrete name is meant as an allusion to a devotion to public service and to remaining “central”. After I chose this name, I discovered that Zhuge Liang actually has a recorded grandson named Zhuge Jing with this same character.

above, me, realizing I picked a good name

ZHOU Yu is written 周瑜 in both simplified and traditional Chinese characters.

The surname Zhou was and remains a very common Chinese surname whose original meaning was like... a really nice field. Like just the greatest f/ucking field you’ve ever seen. “Dang, that is a sweet field” said an ancient Chinese farmer, “I’m gonna make a new Chinese character to record just how great it is.” And then it came to mean things along the line of complete and thorough.

Yu means the excellence of a gemstone--its brilliance, lustre, etc, as opposed to its flaws. It is not a common word but does appear in some expressions such as 瑕不掩瑜 "a flaw does not conceal the rest of the gemstone's beauty; a defect does not mean the whole thing is bad".

Zhou Yu has gone down in history for being not only smart but also artistic and handsome. A real triple threat. And this name speaks to a family that valued art and beauty. It really does suit him.

Zhou Yu had two recorded sons but in my alternate history I gave him four. I borrowed the first one’s name from history: Xun 循, follow. Based on this name, I chose other names that I thought gave a similar sense of his values: Shou 守, guard; Wen 聞, listen. The youngest one I had born when he already knew he was dying, and things had not been going well generally; therefore I had him give him the name Shen 慎, which means “careful, cautious”.

SUN Shangxiang 孫尚香 is one of several names that history and legend give for a sister of w//arlord-king Sun Quan who was married to a rival w//arlord named Liu Bei in a marriage which, historically, uh, didn’t... didn’t go all that well. In my alternate history it goes well! You can’t stop me, I’ve already done it!

The surname Sun means “grandson” and the given name components are Shang mean “values, esteems” and Xiang “scent” which we can combine into meaning something like “precious perfume”. A lot of the recorded names for women in this era (a huge number didn’t have any names recorded, a problem in itself) seem to me to be more concrete, to contain more objects, to be more focused on affection, less focused on hopes and dreams. This makes sense for the era: you love your daughters (I HOPE) but then they get married and leave you. You don’t have long term plans for them because their long term belongs to another clan.

I gave her daughter by Liu Bei the name Liu Yitao 劉義桃. Yi 義 meaning righteousness, rectitude and 桃 meaning... peach. Okay, okay, I know "righteous peach" sounds damn funny in English, but the legendary oath in the peach garden, the "oath of brotherhood" is called in Chinese 結義 "tying righteousness" and the peach garden is, uh, a peach garden. I also give her the cutesy nickname Taotao 桃桃 which you could compare to “Peaches” or “Peachy”. Reduplication of a character in a two-character name is a classic nickname strategy in Chinese.

GUAN Yinping 關銀屏/关银屏 is a “made up” (scare quotes because old legends have their own kind of validity, fight me) name for a historical daughter of Guan Yu. Guan means “to close (a door)”. Yin means “silver” and ping means “a screen, to hide” and according to the legend, her father’s oath brother Zhang Fei named her after a silver treasure. So here again we see a name for a woman that completely lacks the kind of aspirations we see in male names. Who would have an aspiration for a daughter?

My fictional characters, that’s who. I named her daughter Lu Ruofeng 陸若鳳/陆若凤, Ruo (like the) Feng (phoenix), based on a quote from a Confucian text about what one should try to be during both times of chaos and times of good government. I portray her father as a devoted Confucian scholar, so that was another factor for why I looked to Confucian texts for a source of a name.

Modern parents also now have big dreams for their daughters :’) and so modern girls receive names that are far more similar to how boys are named.

GAN Ning 甘寧/甘宁 is a great example of a person whose name does not suit him. Gan 甘 depicts a tongue and means “sweet”, and Ning 寧 which shows a bowl and table and heart beneath a roof means “peaceful”. Which, it would be hard to come up with a name for this guy, a ruthless pirate turned extremely effective general:

that is less suitable than essentially being named “Sweet Peace”.

And when he was an adult, his style name—a name that Chinese men used to be given when they turned 20 (ie became adults) by East Asian reckoning—indeed reflects that. Choosing your own style name was widely considered to be crass. I absolutely think that Gan Ning chose his own style name; he was that kind of a guy. And the name he chose! Xingba 興霸/兴霸! I’ve never seen another style name like it. It means, basically, “thriving dominator”! Brand new official adult Gan Ning treats his style name like he’s picking his Xbox gamer tag and he picks BadassBoss69_420, that’s what this style name is like to me. Except, you know, he had almost certainly killed many hundreds of people by the time he was nineteen, so, uh, it wouldn’t be a wise idea to make fun of his name to his face.

In my fictional version of his life, he married a woman whose father was the exception to the “parents love their children” rule and who named his daughter Pandi 盼第 “expecting a younger brother”, which is a classic “daughters ain’t shit, I want a son” name. Real and actual Chinese women have been given this shitty name and ones like it.

Because Gan Ning had an ironically placid name, I also gave his daughter the placid single character name Wan 婉, which means “gentle, restrained”, as a foil to her wild personality.

So there are a bunch of examples of some historical characters and some OCs and how I chose their names. “But wait, all that was really cool, but how can I do that? You can read Chinese, I can’t!”

I originally had a bunch of links here to dictionaries and resources but Tumblr :) wouldn’t let the post show up in tag search with all the links :) :) :) so you need to check the reblogs of this post to see my own reblog; that reblog has all the links. I’M SORRY ABOUT THIS. Here are a list of the sites without the links if you want to Google them yourself.

MDBG - an open source dictionary - start here

Wiktionary - don’t knock it til you try it

iCIBA (they recently changed their user interface and it’s much less English-speaker friendly now but it’s still a great dictionary)

Pleco (an iOS app, maybe also Android???) contains same open source dictionary as MDBG and also its own proprietary dictionary

Chinese Etymology at hanziyuan dot net

You search some English keywords from the value you want, and then you see what kind of characters you get. You should take the character and then reverse search, making sure that it doesn’t have negative words/meanings, and similar. Look into the etymology and see if it has any thematic elements that appeal to what you’re doing with the character--eg a fire radical for a character with fire powers.

And then, like I mention before, when you have got a couple characters and you think “I think this could be a good name”, you go to Google, you take a very common surname, you append your chosen name—don’t forget to use quotation marks—and you see what happens. Did you get some results? Even better, did you get lots of results? Then you’re probably safe! No results does not necessarily mean your name won’t work, but you should probably run it by an Actual Chinese Native Speaker at that point to check. Also, remember, as I said at the beginning, sometimes people have weird names. If you consciously decide “you know what, I think this character’s parents would choose a weird name”, then own that.

THINGS YOU SHOULD PROBABLY IGNORE!

Starting in relatively recent history (not really a big thing until Song dynasty) and continuing, moreso outside of mainland China, to the modern day, there is something called a generation name component to a name. This means that of a name’s two characters, one of the characters is shared with every other paternal line relative of that person’s generation; historically, usually only boys get a generation name and girls don’t. (Chinese history, banging on pots and pans: DAUGHTERS AIN’T SHIT AND DON’T FORGET IT!) “Generation” here means everyone who is equidistant descendant from some past ancestor, not necessarily that they are exactly the same age. For example, all of ancestor’s X’s sons share the character 一 in their names, his grandsons all have the character 二，great-grandsons 三, great-great-grandsons 四 (I just used numbers because I’m lazy). By the time you get to great-great-grandson, you might have some that are forty years old and some that are babies (because of how old their fathers were when they were conceived), but they are still the same generation.

In some clans, this tradition goes so far as to have something called a name poem, where the generations cycle, character by character, through a poem that was specifically written for this purpose and which is generally about how their clan is super rad.

If you want to riff off of this idea and have siblings or paternal cousins share a character in their names, ok, but it genuinely isn’t necessary. Anyone with a single character name obviously doesn’t have one of these generation names, and by no means does every person with a two character name (especially female) have a generation name. If you’re doing an OC for an ancient Chinese setting (certainly anything before the year about 500), you shouldn’t use these generation names because it wasn’t a thing. Also, in a modern setting, even if such a generation name or name poem exists, it’s not like there is any legal requirement to use it (though there may be family pressure to do so).

As a further complication, some parents do the shared character thing among their children without it actually being a generation name per se because it isn’t shared by any cousins. Or, they have all their children (or all their children of the same gender) share a radical, which is a meaning component in a Chinese character.

If someone does have one of these shared character names, then their nickname will never come from that shared character; either they will be called by the full name or by some name riffing off of the character that is not shared. For example, I knew a pair of sisters called Yuru and Yufei with the same first character; the first sister went by her English name in daily life (even when speaking Chinese) while the second sister was called Feifei.

tl;dr If you don’t already know Chinese, consider generation names an extra complication for masochists only. Definitely not required for modern characters.

Fortune telling is another thing that I think you should either ignore or wildly make up. Do you know what ordinary Chinese people who want to choose a lucky name for their child do? They hire someone to work it out. This is not some DIY shit even if you are deeply immured in the culture. There are considerations of the number of strokes, the radicals, the birth date, the birth hour. You’re the god of your fictional universe, so go ahead and unilaterally declare that your desired names are lucky or unlucky as suits the story if you want to.

MILK NAMES

In modern times, babies get named right away, if for no other reason that the government requires it everywhere in the world for record keeping purposes.

However, in traditional times, Chinese people did not give babies a permanent name right away, instead waiting until a certain period of time had passed (3 months/100 days is a classic).

What do you call the baby in the meantime? A milk name 乳名, which your (close, older than you) family may or may not keep on using for you until such time as you die, just so that you remember that you used to be a funny looking little raisin that peed on people.

This kind of name is almost always very humble, sometimes to the point of being outright insulting. This is because to use any name on your baby that implies you might actually like the little thing is tempting Bad News. Possible exception: sometimes a baby would receive a milk name that dedicated it to some deity. In this case, I guess you’re hoping that deity will be flattered enough to take on the job of shooing away all the other spirits and things that might be otherwise attracted to this Delicious Fresh Baby.

Because milk names were only used by one’s (older) family and very close family friends of one’s parents/grandparents, most people’s milk names are not recorded or known, with some notable exceptions. Liu Shan, the son of Liu Bei, who as a baby was rescued by Zhao Yun during the Shu forces retreat from Changban. Perhaps because his big debut in history/legend was as a baby, he is well-known for his milk name A-Dou 阿斗, which means, essentially, Dipper.

If you’re writing a story, you really only need to worry about a milk name for your character if it’s a historical (or pseudohistorical) setting, and even then only if the character either makes an appearance as a small infant or you consciously decide to have them interact with characters who knew them well as a small child and choose to continue using the milk name. Not all parents, etc who could use the milk name with a youth or an adult actually did so.

Here are some milk names I’ve come up with in my fiction: Little Mouse/Xiaoshu 小鼠 for a girl, Tadpole/Kedou 蝌蚪 for a boy, and Shouty/A-Yao 阿吆 for a boy. In the first two cases the babies were both smol and quiet (as babies go). The last one neither small nor quiet, ahahaha. 蔷蔷 Qiangqiang, which is a pretty enough name meaning “wild rose” (duplication to make it lighter), except the baby is a boy, so this is the typical idea that making a boy feminine makes him worth less, which, yikes, but also, historically accurate. Also Xiaohei 小黑 “Blackie” for a work that I will probably never publish because I don’t ever see myself finishing it. I might recycle it to use on another story.

Here are some more milk names I came up with off the cuff for a friend that wanted an insulting milk name. They ended up not using any of these, so feel free to use, no credit necessary. Rongzi 冗子 “Unwanted Child”; Xiaochou 小丑 “Little Ugly”; A-Xu 阿虛 “Empty”; Pangzhu 胖豬 “Fat Pig”; Shasha 傻傻 “Dummy”.

PITFALLS!

Chinese has a lot of homophones. Like, so many, you cannot even believe. That means the potential for puns, double meanings, etc, is off the charts. And this can be bad, real real bad, when it comes to names. It is way too easy to pick a name and think to yourself “wow, this name is great” and then realize later that the name sounds exactly the same as “cat shit” or something even worse.

Some Chinese families live the name choosing life on hard mode because their surname is itself a homonym that can make almost any name sound bad. I’m speaking of course of the poor Wus and Bus of the world. You see Wu may have innocuous and pleasant surnames associated with it, but it also means “without, un-”. (Bu is similar, sounds like “no, not”.) Suddenly, any pleasant name you give your kid, your kid is NOT that thing.

This means picking a name that is pleasant in itself yet also somehow also pleasant when combined with Wu. So you might pick a character with a sound like Ting, Xian, Hui, or Liang - unstopping, unlimited, no regrets, immeasurable. A positive negative name, a kind of paradox. Like I said, this is naming on hard mode.

If you are naming an ancient character, I am going to say in my opinion you should ignore all considerations of sound, because reconstruction of ancient Chinese pronunciations is on some other, other level of pedantic and you just don’t need to do that to yourself.

For modern characters, however, an attractive name, in general, should be a mix of tones and a mix of sounds. As a non-Chinese speaker, basically this means especially if you go for a two character given name, having all three characters start with the same sound, or end with the same sound, can sound kind of tongue twistery and thus silly/stupid. That doesn’t mean that such names never exist, and can in some cases even sound good (or at least memorable), but how likely is it that you’ve found the exception? Not very. (Two out of three having repetition isn’t bad. It’s three out of three you have to be careful of. Something like Wang Fang or Zhou Pengpeng is probably fine; it’s something over the top like Guan Guangguo or Li Lili you want to avoid.)

Just like the West (sigh), in the modern Sinosphere it is widely acceptable for girls to have masculine names but totally unacceptable for boys to have feminine names. If you see the radical 女 which means woman, don’t choose that character for a boy, at least if you’re trying to be realistic. Now Chinese ideas of masculinity doesn’t have the same boundaries as Western ideas, but if you want to play around in those boundaries, you gotta do that research on your own; you’ve left what I can teach you in this already entirely too long tutorial.

Don’t name a character after someone else in story, or after a famous person. In some/many Western cultures, and actually in some Eastern cultures too (Japan is basically fine with this, for example), naming a baby the same name as someone else (a relative, a saint, a famous person, etc), is a respected and popular way to honour that person.

But not in Chinese culture, not now, not a thousand years ago, not two thousand years ago. (Disclaimer: I bet there is some weird rare exception that, eventually, somebody will “gotcha” me with. I am prepared to be amazed and delighted when this occurs.)

Part of this is because of a fundamentally different idea in Chinese culture vs many other cultures about what is valuing vs disrespecting with regard to personal names. The highest respect paid in Chinese history to a category of personal names is to the emperor, and what would happen there is that it would be under name taboo, a very serious and onerous custom where you not only have to not say the emperor’s name, but you can’t say anything that sounds the same as the emperor’s name.

Did I mention that this is in the language of CRAZY GO NUTS numbers of homonyms? The day-to-day troubles caused by observing name taboo were so potentially intense that there are even instances where, before ascending to the imperial throne, the emperor-to-be would change his name to something that was easier to observe taboo about!

So you see this is an attitude that says: if you want to honour and show respect to somebody, you don’t speak their name.

As the highest person in the land, only the emperor gets this extreme level of avoidance, but it trickles down all through society. You can’t use the personal names of people superior to you. Naming a baby after someone inherently throws the hierarchy out of whack. Now you have a young baby with the same name as a grown adult, or even a dead person, who is due honour from their rank in life. People who would not be permitted to use the inspiration’s name may now use that name because they are superior to the baby who received the name! This would mean that hierarchy was not being preserved, and oh my heaven, is there anything worse than hierarchy not being preserved? All of Chinese History: Noooooo!

Now. As an author—and I hope to God no one is using my Chinese name guide as a resource to name an actual human baby because I can’t take that kind of pressure—you can use the names of characters to inspire the names of other characters, in the following way.

Remember that I said that the key, the starting point, to naming someone in Chinese is to start from a value. Okay. So what you do, if as the author you want to draw a thematic connection between two fictional characters, is take the Inspiration character’s name, think about what the value is that caused that name to be chosen, and then go from that value to choose the New Character’s name.

If you’ll recall what I said about Gan Ning and his baby Wan, this is exactly the approach I took. Gan Ning had a placid single character name that belied his violent and outrageous personality; I chose a placid single character name for his similarly wild daughter to make them thematically similar. As an author, I named his baby after him. But within the context of the story, she was not named after him. Does the distinction make sense?

Values also run in families for obvious reasons. It’s very common to look at a family tree and see lots of names that follow a kind of theme and give you a sense that, eg, this family is rather low class and uneducated; this family is very erudite but a bit too fussy about it; this family is really big on Confucianism. So yes, as an author, looking to other characters for inspiration is not a bad idea.

Remember, a lot of times, as an author, you can and even should kick realism to the curb sometimes. If you want to make some Ominous Foreshadowing that Character A’s name is something to do with fire but! They name their child something to do with water and therefore they are destined to clash with their own offspring, gasp, you can do that kind of thing because you are the god of your universe. Relish your power.

Do you have any more questions? Feel free to send a PM or an ask. I hope this was helpful! Go forth and name your Chinese OCs with slightly more confidence!

Edit 22 April 2019: I added some more sections (fortune telling, Milk Names, and taboo on naming after people). I also need to overhaul the entirety of the previous to emphasize that even thought I thoughtlessly used “Chinese” as if it was synonymous with “Han”, there are non-Han Chinese and they can have very different naming customs. Mea culpa.

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fiendmuse · 4 months

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that aint even a head canon, it's a fact

#┊❛denji❜┊ heroes don't exist. and if they did i wouldn't be one of them #┊❛dash games❜┊ no man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately #┊❛meta❜┊ knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom

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cutiebeams · 4 years

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Hello TWEWY fandom, it's meta time.

TWEWY is filled to the brim with symbolism and hidden meanings, as we all know. Even the partners and their colors when they sync with Neku; I realized, have some depth, and I'm going to articulate my thoughts on it. This is going to be long, so get cozy.

Shiki

Let's start with the first partner we get. Her theme's red, and Neku's is blue. Before we even delve into this analysis, let's unpack the general symbolism of the colors themselves, because that is important as well.

Red: passion, love, anger, energy, courage

Blue: trust, loyalty, wisdom, intelligence, stability

These two colors are essentially on the opposing sides of the color wheel as well; the only shade darker than blue is purple (which is Neku's theme of his attire but that's not important rn stay with me fellas)

Red & blue are portrayed as opposites in a plethora of media and this is no exception: Shiki is the extroversion to Neku's introversion, the pathos to his logos, bubbly and chipper vs his stoic and reserved demeanor. Neku is outwardly hateful (towards other people and his circumstances), and Shiki is inwardly hateful (she hates herself to the point she doesn't think there's anything special about her)

As expected, they clash vehemently at first. Neku is extremely irritated by Shiki's energy and she is frustrated with how aloof and mean he can be. But as they get to know each other, they become like yin and yang; and Shiki's kinder qualities begin to rub off on Neku which he exhibits in the following weeks. Red is often symbolic of love; and Shiki shows a lot of it: she's very friendly and amiable, sympathizing with total strangers and getting along with almost everyone; but she's pretty feisty too- she gets visibly upset when Neku ignores her and makes himself difficult and she's not afraid to call him out (and she DOES, quite a few times). However, she is still overall kind to him, even when he's prickly; trying her best to be patient with him and her gentleness eventually wins him over.. eventually.

When confronted with an issue, Shiki seems to lean towards the emotional aspects of the matter, such as when Ai and Mina were at odds, she hesitated to bring the truth to light because she didn't want to jeopardize their friendship and emotional wellbeing; in contrast to Neku who wanted the truth to be brought to light as soon as possible because he felt that lying was wrong and it needed to be addressed sooner, rather than later, or things would just get worse. Or when 777 couldn't find his tech, Shiki listened to him vent out of sympathy while Neku agreed to help because of the logical results it'd bring-

Shiki is also very outwardly emotional: she's very chirpy but she also isn't afraid to openly express her sorrow, anger, or fear, and sometimes she gets overcome by her emotions. But for the most part, she exhibits high emotional intelligence and understanding of other's feelings; and she's essentially the group's moral support: she's one of the most verbal about being sure that they'll make it back and that they all need to work together. Shiki is also extremely passionate; about other people, about the things she creates, it spills into virtually every aspect of her life.

The sad thing though, is that Shiki seems to love everybody but herself, and we see tiny glimpses of this in her small moments of passiveness (such as telling Neku he doesn't have to shout when he snaps at her) On the flip side, Neku's blunt honesty gives Shiki the inner strength to not only face her self-hatred; but overcome it. And that brings me to Shiki's other color: green. You can see it in her stickers + it's her nickname in Another Day.

Green: nature, rebirth, growth, harmony, healing

I believe that this choice is two-fold: green also symbolizes envy and jealousy and this is something that Shiki's character battles with. She wants to be like Eri- beautiful, smart, charismatic; to the point she even tells Neku that she emulated Eri's personality at first because she was so excited to be in her body. But she then realized that she wasn't Eri, and would never be; nor did she ever want to be. What Shiki truly wanted was to love herself: and that's what her character arc encapsulates; a journey of self-acceptance and self-love.

When we finally get to see real game Shiki, she's wearing green because she's a new person, hence the themes of rebirth and harmony: she's confident and happy in who she is; and so the green changes from the negative connotations of jealousy and envy to the positives of steadiness and self-harmony. There's also healing, for both her and Neku: she helped him to open up emotionally and become gentler, and he helped her accept herself. We don't get to see her face because it doesn't really matter: as Neku himself said, "You'll always be Shiki." It's her character that is important, not her appearance. Green is also red's complementary color, and we see that rather than doing a complete 180 in personality, Shiki just gets a little milder. She's not quite as bubbly, but a lot of her passion is still there, it's just gentler.

In short, Shiki is Neku's opposite. They're like night and day: completely different, but inseparable.

Let's talk about Neku a while now, shall we? His color choice seems contradictory given his personality when we meet him: he is extremely distrusting, volatile and aloof. The thing is though, Neku's arc is also about growth and while he does not exhibit any of the traits of his color scheme at first; during the entirety of the game, he regains himself. Neku's character is about relearning how to trust people and not being afraid to be open and accept different points of view and values- and that diversity is good and healthy! During his first week with Shiki, we get very small glimpses of how emotional Neku actually is, particularly through inner monologue.

When Rhyme is erased, he's distraught (his thoughts tell us he feels awful) but he masks it with blunt logic ("Because we couldn't. That's how it was meant to be"), perhaps to avoid showing vulnerability, even declaring teaming up is a dumb idea- because people get hurt and there are situations where there's nothing you can do about it. Neku's rant when Shiki declares that Beat and Rhyme were their friends takes us right into his psyche:

"Who needs friends?! They just laugh and talk like idiots and pretend to agree with you- so you end up caring about them….exposing yourself...getting HURT..Screw it! We're better off without them! You want other people getting in your way? Dragging you down? I don't!"

And suddenly, Neku's prickliness makes sense- he views attachment as painful and vulnerability as a risk, and so he vehemently avoids them. He's mean because he's hurting and he's sad: and how fitting, as one of the negative connotations for blue is sorrow and grief. Remember how I said Neku didn't exhibit any traits of blue? Well, that was specifically for the positive ones.

Negative symbolism of blue: coldness, aloofness, lack of emotion, unfriendliness, sorrow

And that's Neku to a tee: at first, anyway. While his behavior is not justifiable, it is understandable.

When Shiki snaps at him and tells him that he's inhuman Neku doesn't show any outward response during the actual conflict, but the next day when she apologizes his sprite changes to the "sad turtle" and we get to see his thoughts again:

That I was no better than a Reaper…

Rhyme…

……………

Well...right now…

Neku proceeds to tell Shiki that they need to focus on the mission, and she agrees. While he isn't being especially friendly with her, it's leaps and bounds from his initial open hostility: he's more willing to work with Shiki towards a common goal and one could argue this is when his paradigm shift begins- her comment rattled him a lot, and Neku makes baby steps to change. The daily mission (which involves helping two friends address a misunderstanding) gives us more development for him, too. At this point, he still doesn't think conflicting views and values are a good thing and that relationships only hold him back; and he voices to Shiki that he doesn't see the point of friendships built on falsehoods (which is an excellent point and one that she actually agrees with) and we get to see one of Neku's good qualities: he values truth and honesty a lot.

She asks him if he truly thinks that people are better off without friends, and when he doesn't answer; Shiki talks about how meeting Eri made her want to be her best self (which is how ALL healthy relationships should be, whether platonic or romantic). She mourns Rhyme again, venting that it isn't fair she'll never know what dreams are like and this time, Neku doesn't deflect. He sympathizes, and for the first time since entering the game, allows himself to be emotionally vulnerable:

"I know. I…. I'm sad too. We'll just have to live a little extra. For her sake."

From this point onward, Neku begins to grow positively, slowly but surely. He's not friends with Shiki yet, but he feels safe enough in her company to not only express sorrow but caring enough to encourage her to keep pressing forward; for Rhyme's sake. The next day Shiki is quiet and sad due to being confronted on her self-hatred, and Neku doesn't know how to deal with her lack of cheeriness. But instead of being annoyed with her like before, he's visibly concerned and wondering what's wrong; and he tries to engage with her as much as possible: asking for her viewpoint on the daily mission and what they should do, etc. When he learns the truth about Shiki's identity, Neku just listens patiently and afterwards, his monologue is much more positive and understanding:

All this time..she's been as confused as me.

He now realizes that she's just as scared and upset as he is and he empathizes with that, going even further to say that "I like you the way you are" when Shiki expresses fear in being brought back due to her underlying jealousy: he appreciates her, every aspect of her; not because she's perfect, but just for who she is. Later on when Shiki hesitates to scan Eri and runs away Neku gives her the push to do so: as said earlier, he values the truth, and he knows that Shiki needs to face it if she's going to improve as a person- and we see him beginning to exhibit his wisdom. He's not really gentle, but his honesty is needed. When Shiki begins comparing herself to Eri and self-deprecating, he intervenes, in his own way:

"Oh, would you cut the crap? Who ARE you? You're you. You're not Eri. You'll never be Eri. You'll only ever be you."

Neku reiterates what Shiki told him earlier, about never wanting to be Eri, but he goes a step further. She only went as far as to say she wanted to love herself, but that she never could; while Neku asserts to her that being herself is absolute and unchangeable. Shiki mildly protests this though, saying that Eri is "so much better". To her, while she does value her identity the most, Eri's identity makes her feel inferior. She wants to be her own self, but Eri, in her eyes, is perfect, something that she cannot achieve. And that is why Neku's reply is so important.

"Forget her! You need to live your own life. If she can do it, so can you. All that matters is that you try. You're lucky you're jealous. It gives you something to shoot for. So..shoot."

Up to this point, Shiki has measured the worth of her identity based upon comparison to others, and Neku understands that and tells her upfront that she needs to stop trying to be somebody that she isn't and be confident in her own self, and just do her best- and that'll be enough. He also encourages her to use her jealousy in a productive way, to find her niche; her drive. This gives Shiki the courage to go back and listen to what Eri has to say, and in doing this she hears her friend praise her positive traits, ones that Shiki herself most likely never even realized: her empathy and love for people, her eye for detail, her skill in creating things, her passion and motivation-

ALL things, that according to Eri, "I don't have." And Shiki finally understands that Eri saw her as her equal and that who she is, is valued. Of course, a few positive reinforcements is not enough to do a 180 from most likely years of self-hatred, and so she asks Neku again if she's okay the way she is; and his reply shows yet more growth:

"Hey, Shibuya's got room for all types."

This is a STARK contrast to his dialogue when we first meet him- "All the world needs is me," "You have your values, and I have mine," etc. Neku valued his identity, but he took it to the extreme in that he ONLY valued his identity, values, and morals. After meeting Shiki though, his viewpoint changes a bit and at this point Neku now appreciates diversity- he's still not at the point that he feels he can understand other people, but he at least doesn't see conflict of morals as a bad thing anymore. And in turn, this gives Shiki the inner strength to want to go back to the RG and start afresh. He gives her one last push to go back when she hesitates since she was the only one granted a second chance, with the promise to see her again; and in just a week, Shiki goes from being the biggest pain in Neku's side to his biggest motivation for surviving the second game and one of his best friends.

Joshua

Another week, another partner.

What's interesting about Joshua is that he is also blue, just a lighter shade. While Shiki is Neku's opposite, Joshua is more akin to his shadow- a mirror, of sorts.

Light Blue: peace, serenity, ethereal, spiritual, infinity

Josh and Neku are extremely similar, but their personalities still converge at enough points that they're starkly different: their tempers especially are a separating point as Neku is much snappier than Joshua (especially if provoked), and despite Josh being represented by a lighter color, in a lot of ways, he symbolizes his partner's negative traits in even more extreme ways in a subversion to expectations; a "darker" version of him, in a sense.

When they first meet, these two also clash, but for entirely different reasons. Joshua's attitude, as well as his dodginess, pisses Neku off immensely. While his first week with Shiki is about relearning how to build trust, his second week is a test of said trust by giving him a partner very similar to his former self: distant, aloof, uncaring. It gets especially tricky when Neku scans Joshua and sees himself dead, and he begins to distance himself again; deciding that there is no way that he can trust him- and not only that, but that it'd be ridiculous to do so. Neku senses something is off: he doesn't know what it is, but it unsettles him enough that he is steadfast in his decision to keep Josh at arm's length.

...Until he and Josh visit Mr. Hanekoma, and upon learning that his teammate and Mr. H are acquainted, Neku decides that perhaps Joshua isn't as bad as he initially thought: but he's still pretty hesitant; and understandably so. Mr. H gives him some backstory of his partner, and his motives start to come to light - turns out, Joshua has been able to see the game while living, and that alienated him from other people since Hanekoma was the only one he could confide in. Just like with Neku, this doesn't justify his behavior, but it does make it understandable: Josh pushes away people by playfully antagonizing them and making himself difficult, and Neku pushes them away through hostility.

When he and Josh visit Udagawa, they connect on both not doing well in groups and Joshua comments that they're more alike than he thought, which leads into a conversation about people not being able to understand each other as long as they have their own worlds and Neku begins to backslide a little:

"Right? They're them, and I'm me. Talking to them gets me nothing."

He goes on to say he respects CAT and their philosophy about doing your own thing and how he needs to just enjoy his life and forget about others, and Josh agrees. While Shiki is Neku's friend, she is the exception, not the norm, and Neku still doesn't trust most people. However, when Josh expresses not needing other people's values, Neku's reply is interesting. He agrees outwardly, but it's hesitant, as if he's unsure of himself.

"Yeah..."

His inner thoughts show us that once again, he is changing.

But...I don't feel that way anymore. Since coming to the UG, reading people's minds- Shibuya's full of people with just as many viewpoints. Mr. H said the world ends with me. To expand my world, I have to learn to look farther- not write off other people's values as inferior.

….Maybe I had it backwards. Maybe I need to open up to really enjoy-

Josh calls him and snaps him out of his thoughts so we don't know what he was going to think next, but Neku has definitely experienced a massive paradigm shift in his way of thinking: he's inwardly questioning himself and acknowledging his wrongs and showing willingness to trust again and is showing a lot more empathy to other people. However, this resolve begins to crack when more holes in his memory get filled. Neku is angry and confused, but most of all, he's hurt and we see it in his reaction when Josh asks if he's okay; because he distances himself again. This situation causes him grow distant once more and he also gets more openly prickly since his trust is shaky. Josh relating to him that he feels he belongs in the UG doesn't help matters, either.

However, a later conversation has him moving forwards again. While acknowledging that people are not meant to see eye to eye, he thinks to himself that perhaps it is better that way. People don't think alike, but they can at least try to understand each other; and he then gets the resolve to actually counter Joshua's argument of solely reading people's thoughts and not talking to them.

"But why? Where's the enjoyment in that? I'd rather broaden my world my own way."

And again, we get a small paradigm shift of Neku feeling comfortable enough to express the positive changes that he has slowly been experiencing: blue symbolizes stability, and by this point in the story he is obtaining more and more of it: in his values, in his emotional expression, in how he deals with people, etc. He gets thrown for an immense loop learning that Joshua is alive though, and Neku finally snaps when his teammate brushes it off claiming they're "just like any other pair"-

He's utterly disgusted by Joshua treating the Game as an adrenaline rush- even when Neku first got into the Reaper's Game, he never enjoyed it, even if he initially was only looking out for himself at first; and the idea of getting excitement from toying with death is foreign to him. It only gets worse when Neku accuses Josh that HE killed him, and simply is taunted in return. From that point onward, he becomes openly hostile and snappy again, throwing the idea of trusting his teammate to the wind and tells him upfront that he's only going to tolerate him to survive; leaning back on his negative qualities (because growth is a process and there will be moments of wavering and backwards steps, and that's normal!)

Later on he also shows open distress when a Reaper is attacked and they are unable to save him; declaring they "left him to die." Even though it wasn't any fault of their own, Neku self-blames just like Shiki did in the first week- thinking that he could've done something, maybe if he had gotten there sooner, or defeated the Noise faster. While not 100%, Neku is comfortable enough to openly express sorrow, and Joshua underhandedly sympathizes and takes the blame off him ("We did what we had to do Neku.") He also protects Sota from Noise later down the line even though his partner is already erased and he's going to die anyway and again expresses sadness ("If only we'd gotten here earlier") and even indignation after the older man dies, screaming in anger about all the people who have been erased ("These are people, not toys!!"). When Josh questions him about the interest in others, he then explains that he's gotten to know folks better and that "it's different now".

"They're not just strangers. I can't shut them out like that."

This is really important because in this, Neku is essentially declaring he cannot go back to who he used to be; nor does he WANT to. He refuses to, and he is making a conscious effort to be open to other people even if he doesn't understand them. Neku goes on to assert that one needs to reach out to others as well in counter to Josh asserting that he won't ever be able to understand others and this time, Joshua responds positively. Through Neku's steadfastness and refusal to waver on his viewpoints once he truly feels solid in them, and his courage to express them and not back down; he influences Joshua into thinking that perhaps people truly do need each other and can understand each other, even if it isn't easy to do so. In showing sympathy towards his enemies, he also proves again and again that people can change too, for the better; and his wisdom begins to shine once more. (And it is this change that ultimately leads Joshua to decide to save Shibuya) Unfortunately, Neku is thrown for yet another loop upon getting more of his memory back and thinking that Sho killed him, and Josh sacrificing himself is absolutely world-rocking.

He blames himself again, angry at himself for not opening up; and it is with this mindset that he is thrown into the Reaper's Game for the final time. His trust is in shambles, and the third week is Neku's personal test to see if he is willing to reach out despite being recently wounded by his partner.

Speaking of, Joshua doesn't really have an arc compared to the rest of the cast: rather, he serves as the catalyst to their growth instead. His character is interesting because from beginning to end, he expresses essentially none of the positive attributes of the color he is represented by; he only appears to at first glance. While Josh does change his mind about destroying UG Shibuya and is convinced that people can change for the better, whether he himself changes for the better is up for debate. Orange is the second color associated with him (it's the shade of his cell phone and his stickers), but just like with light blue, he expresses none of its positive traits.

Orange: enthusiasm, happiness, creativity, determination, encouragement

Negative symbolism of orange includes insensitivity, pessimism, and being unsociable, all aspects of Joshua's character. He doesn't think that people can change; and that it is impossible to understand them (he even goes as far to express "I'd rather just get rid of them" in a dark contrast to Neku, who is content to merely ignore people). Josh doesn't like groups of people either, and he exhibits insensitivity many times throughout the second week, merely behaving charismatic in order to interact with others. He doesn't really grow outwardly, but that's not the point of his character; he's Neku's test to see if he's truly changed or not.

Joshua is Neku's shadow, he's in the same vein. Rather than night and day, they are as dusk and midnight.

Beat

Beat is interesting because his color was actually switched for Final Remix: in the original DS version Beat is green, and in the Switch version he is yellow. I'm going to dive into both because I feel they're equally important. I already covered green for Shiki, but green has yet another meaning which describes Beat to a tee- safety. While Shiki is the moral support and mediator, he is the protector: he's extremely sacrificing for his sister and the people he cares about to the point of putting himself in physical danger to keep them safe (such as jumping in front of a car to save Rhyme, or jumping in front of Neku to protect him from a brainwashed Shiki). That much stays constant throughout the game. Healing also applies to him, as he helps Neku to open up and feel safe being emotional again by not being ashamed of being emotional himself: Beat openly cries over Rhyme and Neku mourns with him, and they help each other heal by learning to rely on one another. Not just as partners, but as friends.

Yellow: joy, warmth, positivity, friendship

From the get go, Beat is a huge bundle of energy and he's extremely kind; although he gets rather volatile if he feels slighted. But like with Shiki, he's overall a very sweet person and openly emotional: he gets angry in a heartbeat, laughs heartily when he's happy, and cries freely when he's sad- and his tears are never portrayed in a negative manner either; they're just a normal reaction to a sad situation and this normalization of sorrow leads to Neku getting comfortable again in being vulnerable- one could argue he's the most emotional in Week 3. Yellow is the complementary color to purple, which is also the main shade of Neku's design. Rather than an opposite like Shiki, or a shadow like Joshua, Beat is Neku's foil. He's a lot kinder and he's got a big heart but he is also extremely impulsive and acts w/o thinking. In contrast, Neku thinks things through logically, but he's a little lacking emotionally; and so they balance each other out. He's also highly attune to when Neku starts withdrawing into himself and gently snaps him out of it constantly; showing once again his sensitivity to emotion. (He consistently asks Neku if he's okay when he gets lost in thought; which Neku does a lot, especially if he's upset. Beat keeps him grounded.)

Beat's arc is finding value in himself again + doing his best; not for other people, but for himself and finding his drive. When mourning Rhyme, he vents that "she thought I was worth dying for" and that she had much more to live for, and he doesn't understand why she'd sacrifice for him. (And he blames himself for her death, as well) While Beat is protective out of the kindness of his heart, it also comes from a lack of self-worth: he places other people above himself, to a fault. Neku sympathizes with his grief but then goes a step farther to encourage him to not be regretful. In another contrast to Shiki, rather than another's identity making him feel inferior to the point of emulating them and overshooting, Beat jumps to the other side of the ditch and loses his passion altogether.

Rhyme refused to give up on him, but eventually Beat began to resent her pity and he began to push her away as well. After they both died and came to the Game though, Rhyme's declaration that she had nothing to live for startled him into realizing that she meant a lot more to him than he thought and more than anything else; he wanted to be there for her as she was for him. After beating himself up, Neku comforts Beat in his own way, telling him that he needs to focus on the now and not let his sorrow overcome him, in essence; but also to go the distance just for himself, not for anyone else.

And Beat gets his fire all over again, eventually declaring that Neku isn't his partner anymore- he's a friend, and one that he cares about a lot.

Through his partners, Neku finds himself, they all strengthen different aspects of him. He learns to trust, to be open, to find value in friendship again and him taking off his headphones is the ultimate metaphor of him letting the world back in.

Shiki, his opposite.

Joshua, his shadow.

Beat, his foil.

They all shaped his world, and showed Neku just how wonderful it really is.

And that is beautiful.

#twewy #neku sakuraba #shiki misaki #joshua kiryu #beat #daisukenojo bito #the world ends with you #meta #I have a lot of feelings for this game. It's a masterpiece.

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tigerkirby215 · 4 years

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5e Twisted Fate the Card Master build (League of Legends)

(Artwork by Riot Games)

Never lost a fair game, or played one.

Twisted Fate is one of the oldest champions in the game and despite never being extensively changed he’s always found his way in and out of the meta. A very simple kit makes him a great champion for skill expression among pros.

There isn’t much reason for this build other than “I thought it would be cool.” Twisted Fate has always been a champ that I wanted to learn and while doing some brainstorming I felt it would be fun to try to make him in 5e!

GOALS

It's all in the cards - Throwing cards aren’t the most practical choice of weapon, but they’re Tobias’ weapon of choice. By the way did you know that Twisted Fate’s real name is Tobias?

Shinin' gold - Twisted Fate’s iconic ability is to pick a card for either more damage, an AoE burst, or a stun. We’ll be taking all of them.

No fightin' destiny - It wouldn’t be Twisted Fate without the ability to teleport behind you. Nothing personnel, kid.

RACE

The people of the Serpentine River are human, and henceforth Twisted Fate’s a Variant Human with some card skills. You can increase two skills by 1: choose Dexterity and Intelligence for card reading and slight of hand. And for your skill you have to persuade people to sit at the table after all, so take Persuasion.

As for your Feat take the Observant feat to watch the cards: increase your Intelligence further and watch for any cheats at the table. And for your language there are no doubt a lot of sea creatures that speak Aquan in Bilgewater, so pick Primordial to speak to them and any other elementals.

ABILITY SCORES

15; DEXTERITY - Jack be nimble and Jack be quick, since you need mobility to survive in Bilgewater.

14; INTELLIGENCE - Poker is a game of smarts as well as luck, and while lady luck is smiling you also need your own skills.

13; CHARISMA - Not as high as I’d like but we need other skills more, and 13 is still more than enough to charm I’m sure.

12; WISDOM - Wisdom is tied to both Perception and Insight which you need to watch the cards.

10; CONSTITUTION - A little lower than I’d like (feel free to swap the 12 in WIS for this) but Twisted Fate’s hardly a tank.

8; STRENGTH - Again: Twisted Fate’s hardly a tank and it’s up to Malcolm to do the heavy lifting. (Oh god now I need to do a Graves build...)

BACKGROUND

Fun fact: Twisted Fate is a Gambler, which is a background in Acquisitions Incorporated. You get proficiency in Deception and Insight (not Slight of Hand, for some reason?!), one language (pick your poison), and one gaming set (which will of course be a Playing Card Set.)

Your feature is Never Tell Me the Odds, letting you scout out tables to swindle or more rough pirates who won’t take kindly to being scammed.

(Artwork by Riot Games)

THE BUILD

LEVEL 1 - ARTIFICER 1

Starting off as an Artificer because I really like this class and we need both their saving throw proficiencies and their skill proficiencies for Slight of Hand and Perception at the table. You also get an Artisan’s Tool of your choice and I’d pick whatever since it really doesn’t matter.

As an Artificer you have Magical Tinkering which lets you do a bunch of fancy tricks to your cards. You touch a tiny non-magical object and can make it shine light, play a message, let out a smell or a sound, or change in visual appearance. Read over the ability to see everything you can do but the effect lasts indefinitely but you can only have a number of these active equal to your Intelligence modifier. You can touch an object you Tinkered with to end the property early but if you try to make a new one the oldest effect ends.

You also get access to Spellcasting as an Artificer. You get two cantrips from the Artificer list: Guidance will give you some luck with the cards and Acid Splash will let you throw out a red card for some AoE damage.

Artificer’s are a prepared spellcaster, meaning you can swap out your spells for others on the Artificer list at the end of a Long Rest. Regardless these spells will be suggestions for the most in-character spells to take: Detect Magic and Identify are both good to make sure no one’s cheating at the table, and Disguise Self is useful to hide in a crowd if needed.

LEVEL 2 - ARTIFICER 2

Second level Artificers can Infuse Items to create a variety of magic items. As I say whenever I make an Artificer build I’d suggest picking Artificer Infusions that help your party but with only two levels we won’t be getting many.

The Returning Weapon infusion is the main one we’re here for. It lets you turn a thrown weapon magical and will cause it to return to your hand immediately after throwing it. Playing cards aren’t a “weapon” but a Dagger is pretty close, and it’s the only Finesse Thrown weapon you can take.

An Enhanced Arcane Focus is better if you want to go straight for spells. You don’t have any spell attacks yet but...

Is Graves asking you to look over his gun? Well pass him a Repeating Shot weapon so he doesn’t have to waste as much time reloading.

Fun fact: as an Artificer you can recreate common magic items from Xanathar’s Guide. Feel free to craft yourself some Loaded Dice with the Charlatan’s Die.

You can only make two of your infusions, and since one will be more-or-less permanently locked into Returning Weapon I’d choose your other option wisely.

You also get another spell: the Sanctuary spell will force any enemies that attack you to make a Wisdom save or be forced to attack someone else, which can be good in case they get pissed off when you swindle them. The effect does go away as soon as you attack though.

LEVEL 3 - FIGHTER 1

Now that we’ve got our cards it’s time to stack the deck. Level 1 Fighters can choose a Fighting Style and the Thrown Weapon Fighting style from the Class Feature Variants UA is perfect for a card-slinger.

IF UA ISN’T ALLOWED see if they count Archery for thrown weapons. If not I’d probably opt for Dueling so if you get into a melee fight you won’t be completely defenseless.

You also get a Refillable Potion with Second Wind, letting you regain hit points equal to 1d10 + your fighter level once per short or long rest.

LEVEL 4 - FIGHTER 2

Level 2 Fighters can use their Stacked Deck to Action Surge, letting them take one additional action on their turn once per short or long rest. The cool thing about Action Surge as a spellcaster is that you can use the extra action to cast a spell and then attack or do something else, but you can only cast one leveled spell per turn. Why am I telling you this when most of your spells are utility-based? No particular reason.

LEVEL 5 - FIGHTER 3

Level 3 Fighters can choose their Martial Archetype and Battle Masters are great at card tricks. I assume because you’re throwing a knife not a playing card. Regardless Battle Masters are Students of War, letting them gain proficiency in one Artisan’s Tool of their choice. Again pick whatever or see if your DM can let you take a Gaming Set instead.

But more notably you Combat Superiority die. You have four superiority dice, which are d8s and regain any expended dice when you finish a short or long rest. You can use your Superiority die to do a variety of Maneuvers:

Trip Attack will be your golden ace in the hole. When you hit a creature with a weapon attack you can expend one superiority die to attempt to knock the target down. You add the superiority die to the attack’s damage roll, and if the target is Large or smaller, it must make a Strength saving throw. (8 + your proficiency bonus + your Dexterity modifier btw.) On a failed save, you knock the target prone. Note that knocking a target prone will make it harder to hit them with ranged attacks but it will make it easier for melee characters to hit them, and also slow them down for a moment.

If you’re fine with your stunned target moving then Distracting Strike will give your allies an opening to attack with Advantage, and also let you add the Superiority die to the damage.

Disarming Strike isn’t something TF can do in the Fields of Justice but it’s very in-flavor to knock the weapon out of an enemy’s hand (with a Strength save) and do some more damage.

LEVEL 6 - FIGHTER 4

That uneven Charisma score is annoying me, and you can’t be a silver-tongued swindler without the Silver-Tongued Feat from the Feats for Skills UA. Your Charisma score increases by 1 and you get Expertise in the Deception skill since you already had proficiency in it to begin with.

IF UA ISN’T ALLOWED feel free to grab the Prodigy Feat instead for Expertise in Deception (or Slight of Hand) and some more skills. This won’t increase your Charisma however so you’ll have to find another way to even out your ability scores.

In addition when you take the Attack action you can replace one attack with an attempt to deceive a humanoid you can see within 30 feet of you as long as they can also see and hear you. Make a Deception check contested by the target’s Insight: if you succeed your movement doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks from the target and your attack rolls against it have advantage; both benefits last until the end of your next turn or until you use this ability on a different target. If your check fails, the target can’t be deceived by you in this way for 1 hour.

You do only have one attack currently but with Action Surge this will let you have Advantage on that attack and any attack on your next turn. And speaking of extra attacks...

LEVEL 7 - FIGHTER 5

5th level Fighters can get value out of that silver tongue with an Extra Attack. This means that by replacing one attack with a Deception check you can get Advantage on three attacks over two turns, or up to five attacks if you Action Surge.

(Artwork by Riot Games)

LEVEL 8 - WIZARD 1

Now that we’ve got our deck it’s time to du-du-du-du-du for a date with Destiny. As a level 1 Wizard you get access to Spellcasting with 3 cantrips and 6 spells known. For your cantrips Prestidigitation and Minor Illusion will allow you to do some more card tricks and Friends will let you con your way through life with ease. As for your spells...

Color Spray will let you toss out a whole deck of cards, blinding your opponents with blues and reds.

Distort Value is good for any con, allowing you to make an item seem more valuble.

Ice Knife can be red, since it’ll explode in an AoE and chill your opponents. (But not slow them.)

Jim’s Magic Missile will let you throw out three cards that do considerably more Force damage than a regular Magic Missile.

Protection from Evil and Good can be good help for your partner in crime.

And Tenser’s Floating Disk will be helpful to haul all that loot.

You also get Arcane Recovery, letting you recover spell slots equal to half your Wizard level rounded up.

LEVEL 9 - WIZARD 2

Now you’re probably wondering what Wizard Twisted Fate would be right? You’re thinking obviously Divination, or maybe Illusion? Perhaps even Enchantment to further the con?

Nope; Conjuration baby! Put bluntly Twisted Fate conjures cards into his hand, which you can do with Minor Conjuration. You spend an action to conjure up an inanimate object that’s no more than 3 feet cubed and weighs no more than 10 pounds. The object must look like a non-magical object you’ve seen before and is visibly magical, radiating dim light out to 5 feet, and it lasts for 1 hour unless it takes damage or you use this feature again, so you can only have one fake card at a time. There’s a lot of really funky stuff you can do with this and it’s up to your creativity to make it shine!

For your spells of choice Magic Missile is a far more accurate blue card, and Feather Fall can help you make sure you don’t lose your hat.

LEVEL 10 - WIZARD 3

3rd level Wizards can learn second level spells like Jim’s Glowing Card Coin to distract the table while you make your getaway and Darkvision, to help with the fact that your pitiful human eyes can’t see in the dark.

LEVEL 11 - WIZARD 4

At 4th level you get an Ability Score Improvement: increase your Dexterity for more precise card throws and an easier time avoiding damage.

You also learn another Cantrip: seeing as we’re still a pitiful human who can’t see in the dark the Light spell will let you light up a golden card to illuminate the path ahead.

You also learn two spells: Hold Person will let you Paralyze (not stun!) a target for your teammates to beat them down and Misty Step to pickup Flash.

LEVEL 12 - WIZARD 5

5th level Wizards can prepare third level spells like Melf’s Minute Meteors for a whole pack of red cards! As an action you create six floating red cards around your person and as a bonus action you can shoot one or two of them up to 120 feet away. Each creature within 5 feet of the point where the card explodes must make a Dexterity saving throw or 2d6 fire damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.

Alternatively if Malcom is looking for you grab the Nondectection spell to make hiding just a little bit easier when he doesn’t have any tricks up his sleeve.

LEVEL 13 - WIZARD 6

6th level Conjuration Wizards get Benign Transposition, allowing them to use an action to Flash up to 30 feet to an unoccupied space they can see. You can also instead choose a space within range that is occupied by a Small or Medium creature and swap places with them if they’re willing. Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest or you cast a conjuration spell of 1st level or higher. Remember that this does take your action, meaning that you most likely can’t cast spells or attack after using this, but it’s still an insanely good utility.

You also learn more spells and I think everyone knows what Fireball is; full-AP red card go boom. If you’re looking for someone to give a date with Destiny then Clairvoyance will let you create a sensor in a familiar location to either see or hear what’s going on within.

LEVEL 14 - WIZARD 7

7th level Wizards get access to 4th level spells, which is what we were looking for with Dimension Door. As an action you teleport up to 500 feet away to a location you can either visualize or describe. You can bring objects that you can carry and also bring one willing creature of your size or smaller who is carrying gear up to its carrying capacity. This spell actually pairs very well with Clairvoyance that we got last level because you can use that spell to peek into an area so you can visualize it for Dimension Door.

For your second spell? Eh; how about you jump back to third level for Counterspell? You’ve gotta protect the gang after all. And remember that as a Wizard your spell list is only restricted by what spell scrolls you can find.

(Artwork by Riot Games)

LEVEL 15 - FIGHTER 6

Now that we’ve finally made out date with Destiny it’s time to learn some more card tricks. 6th level Fighters get another Ability Score Improvement and we’re going to want to cap our Dexterity for sharper cards and thicker leather chaps.

LEVEL 16 - FIGHTER 7

7th level Battle Masters get one more Superiority Die and two more Maneuvers: Maneuvering Attack is great to set up an ambush, letting your jungler use their reaction to speed up at your command. Precision Attack helps if your opponent is building armor, letting you add your Superiority Die to your accuracy.

You can also spend one minute to Know Your Enemy. For every minute your study your enemy you can learn if any of the creature’s following stats are equal, superior, or inferior to you:

Strength score

Dexterity score

Constitution score

Armor Class

Current hit points

Total class levels (if any)

Fighter class levels (if any)

Considering that you have levels in Wizard this can be very useful to determine what saving throws to go for when you start the fight! Is their Dexterity equal to yours? Maybe don’t hit them with the DEX save. Is their AC high? Maybe do hit them with the DEX save.

LEVEL 17 - FIGHTER 8

8th level Fighter? Lady luck is smiling! Take the Lucky feat for an Ace up your sleeve when the going gets tough.

LEVEL 18 - FIGHTER 9

9th level Fighters get Indomitable, letting them reroll a failed Saving Throw once per Long Rest. Consider it a bit of Serpentine luck helping you when you really need it, so use it wisely; preferably on something you actually have a chance of rolling well on your save for?

LEVEL 19 - FIGHTER 10

10th level Battle Masters get Improved Combat Superiority dice, turning them into d10s. You also get two more Manuevers and we’ll be jumping over to the Class Feature Variants UA for Silver Tongue, letting you add your Superiority die to any Deception or Persuasion check you make. The Snipe meanwhile will let you sneak a card into your combo, allowing you to spend your Bonus Action to make a ranged weapon attack with the Superiority die, adding the dice to the damage if you hit. This can be a good way to sneak a bit more damage in if you teleport behind a squishy carry.

LEVEL 20 - FIGHTER 11

Our capstone is the 11th level of Fighter for a third Extra Attack, letting you attack three times per round or six times with Action Surge. If you activated Silver Tongued this equals a total of 5 attacks with Advantage over the course of two turns, or 8 attacks with Advantage if you use Action Surge! With that many cards in the deck someone’s going to have to fold.

FINAL BUILD

PROS

Lady luck is smilin' - You have an immense amount of utility with magic and maneuvers to help you both in and out of combat; tons of mobility with Conjuration spells and a good bit of roleplay utility with some strong skills, a great passive perception, and Roguish proficiencies.

Cheater's just a fancy word for winner - If your DM allows you to use the Silver-Tongued feat then you’ll be making almost all your attacks with Advantage, allowing you to maximize your maneuvers. And +14 Deception is great for RP in its own right.

I never bluff - Despite having several abilities that only come back after a Long Rest you’re quite capable of surviving on just Short Rests and Refillable Potions. With Arcane Recovery giving you back up to 4 levels worth in spell slots, Benign Transposition coming back whenever you use a Conjuration spell, and all your Fighter abilities coming back on a Short rest you can keep trucking on even after a bad teamfight.

CONS

Nobody touches the hat - Wizard levels plus a 0 in Constitution results in about a hundred health. Invest in some Ruby Crystals (Amulet of Health) when you can or else you’re just a Power Word: Kill away from death.

All or nothin' - Throwing knives honestly aren’t that practical as a ranged weapon. If you don’t mind not having a melee backup try making a Repeating (Cross)bow instead.

Only a fool plays the hand he's dealt - The biggest truth however is that the 2 levels in Artificer really doesn’t do much for you. All you get is a bunch of spells you could’ve gotten from Wizard and the Returning Dagger. If you have a reliable way to get some throwing cards (either from a DM or an allied Artificer giving you a more reliable ranged weapon) I’d suggest splitting those two Artificer levels among Fighter and Wizard for more Ability Score Improvements and a 20 in Intelligence.

But you can work well alone and with a crew. You’re the ace in the hole for any party, even a party of 1. Keep your cards close to your chest and play what you need at the right time. Just be sure to know when to put down your cards and pull out the big guns.

(Artwork by Riot Games)

#DnD 5e #dnd #dnd build #dnd fighter #dnd wizard #League of Legends #League of Legends Twisted Fate #never lost a fair game #or played one

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rowan-raven-rogue · 4 years

Text

kirschwein (ch1)

will probably edit later when it’s not 3am but let’s get this posted babey

kirschwein

word count: 2127/2830 part 2/8 rating: general audiences warnings: no warnings apply category: f/m fandom: critical role (web series) relationship: jester lavorre/caleb widogast Characters: jester lavorre, caleb widogast

additional tags: let’s see how matt mercer thrusts the harpoon of canon straight through the heart of this story in like 5 episodes, somewhere between AU and canon-divergent?, established relationship, technically mechanically compliant, we can discuss the meta of greater restoration vs heal if you want

chapter 1

Despite evidence to the contrary, she thinks, Jester really is not suited for healer’s work.

To heal is one thing, certainly; one whisper to the Traveler, and a wound in Beau’s shoulder closes, or a burn on Caduceus’ palm blisters over and cools. But the work of healing - bandaging, applying poultice, splinting - that remains a mystery, even after the morning spent in the red-haired healer woman’s tent. A body really does most of the work by itself, Jester thinks, diligently elevating a young man’s shattered leg all the same, the way the woman had instructed. She croons something low and nonsensical to soothe him, as he half-cries in his half-sleep, and is thankful that her mama taught her at least a bit about the work of consolation.

To be perfectly honest, she might have been of slightly more use on the builder’s crew. Slightly.

“That’s very good, dear,” the red-haired woman smiles, only with the corners of her eyes. She finishes applying delicate-smelling balm to the frizzy side of a dwarf woman’s face, then turns to Jester. “You learn quickly.”

“Not always,” Jester admits. “Only because you showed me. If I had to learn this from a book or something, or if you were just talking me through it I would have no idea what was going on.”

“We learn in different ways,” nods the woman, in her thick, familiar accent. “I learned much of what I know from books, but they do not, ah, always have the full story.” The young man lying next to Jester groans again, and she reflexively lays a hand on his arm and hums something lullsome. “A page cannot teach that,” she says, softer, indicating.

“I could do more,” Jester ponders, “but he seems okay for now, and if anyone else gets brought in that might be worse, I don’t want to… I’d rather save it.”

“More wisdom.”

“But if no one else comes today, I can fix it no problem,” Jester says, and puffs just a touch of green sparks from her fingertips, for effect.

The older woman’s eyes crease, again, the way they had earlier that morning, when Jester first arrived, when she first set her fingertips to the gashes clawed in a half-elf child’s back and asked Please, Traveller, make it stop hurting. Not in a smiling way, and not for longer than an instant, but long enough for Jester to see, and to vanish the green sparks with a small noise like a weasel’s squeak.

“You are talented,” murmurs the red-haired woman, and the rain slowly pattering away at the canvas above them drums a little harder and faster.

“I hope Caduceus is okay,” Jester says, as if she could look through canvas walls and summon him, dripping but cheerful.

“He is allergic to water?” the woman says, unblinking, and it takes Jester seconds to realize she’s joking.

“Yes,” she deadpans back, in her best mimic of Caleb - and there was a pang, she hadn’t seen him all day - but the woman actually laughs, small but full.

“He will be alright,” she says. “I am sure the apothecary is… overworked, today.”

“He’s better at this kind of thing,” Jester says. “Healing without, uh. Cheating. He knows what he’s doing.”

“I am grateful for your help,” the red-haired woman says, firmly, seating herself by the small brazier in the center of the tent. “Normally, they,” with a small circle of the hand, to her patients, “would be cared for at the hospital, but. You saw the state of the hospital, after...” And after a long pause, “I do not think of it as cheating.”

Jester sits, mindful of the patients resting. The woman continues to stare into the glowing coals.

“We simply have different ways of accomplishing the same task,” she says, finally. “You are skilled as you are, dear.”

A blush purples faintly over Jester’s cheeks “You sound like my - friend,” she says. How do I refer to Caleb, exactly?

“Hmm?” says the woman. “She is smart, then.”

“He’s so smart,” says Jester, eagerness creeping in at the edges of her voice. “I meant you sound the same like you have the same accent. He’s Zemnian, too.”

“Is he a healer, also?”

Jester shakes her head. “He usually needs me to like, put his arms and legs back on after a fight or something. But he’s really good at other stuff.”

“A mage, then,” and that same small ghosting look gathers in the corner of her eyes, and dissipates just as quickly. “That will be useful, if your aim is to hunt these creatures. They are quite strong.” There is a small pop from one of the glowing coals. “My husband was a soldier, and he only barely managed to slay one of them, once. I nearly had to put his arms and legs back on myself.” A suggestion of a smile turns at the woman’s mouth. “He is… not in his fighting prime, of course. That was one of the few times I have thanked the gods for his hard-headedness. I think he was simply too stubborn to bleed out.”

“Oh my God, Caleb is so stubborn sometimes,” agreement spills from Jester, and the woman cocks an eyebrow.

“Your - friend?” she says, with a suggestion, lilted and understanding, and Jester takes pause.

“Well - yes, and also - I mean, we’re together, but - it’s so hard, when we’re with this big group, you know, like - you never get any time to yourself as it is, and it hasn’t been that long…” Jester’s words trail off into a small, exasperated sigh.

“My goodness,” the woman laughs again, this time fuller. “I do not miss being young, my dear, it seems just as complicated as I remember.”

“It wouldn’t be, if…” and Jester trails off again. If we weren’t worried about everybody making it weird? or for a shameful instant, if he could let himself be happy for longer than a few minutes at a time? although that one Jester quickly sweeps away.

The woman filled her pause. “Well, I’m sorry to say you signed up for stubbornness with that one, if he’s a Zemnian boy. My husband is this way, and my son.” There is a hitch to her voice, near the end, catching over son in a way Jester can’t miss. The pitched canvas above them thrums harder still beneath the rain. “He was a mage, as well.”

“Your son?” Jester says, carefully.

“Yes,” and the woman’s voice peters out into something like a whisper, carrying something heavy and unmistakable.

“I’m sorry,” Jester says simply.

“Thank you,” the woman replies. The wind and rain somewhat quiet, and eventually she picks up again with the smallest of shakes of her head. “From where in the Zemni Fields is your friend, dear?”

“Oh, uh. I’m not actually sure, he doesn’t really like to talk about it.”

Nodding, “Many lives were difficult, before, after the first war. I cannot blame him. Well, if you are going to be in town for a few days, you are welcome to pay us a visit. Gods know there aren’t enough friendly faces near, especially for strangers.”

“That’s very kind, thank you.��

“And if it helps, you can tell him we’re from Blumenthal. He probably won’t know where that is, it’s such a small village, but. Who knows.”

“I will.”

“I’m back, Miss Una,” the canvas flap at the front of the tent mutters open, and Caduceus ducks inside, stray strands of pink slicked to his otherwise-placid face. “They were out of yarrow, I hope you don’t mind, I asked for comfrey instead. Jester, I saw the weirdest thing,” he says, depositing a large pouch on a nearby work table. “I thought this guy out there was Caleb for a minute, it was freaky.”

“Caduceus,” Jester says, in mock disappointment, hoping the points of her teeth don’t belie the joke, “It wasn’t actually Caleb, right?”

“No, when I got closer it was an older gentleman. One of the guys working on the hospital,” he replies. “They look really similar though. I know everyone’s supposed to have a doppelganger here and there, but. Huh.”

“On the hospital?” Una says, frowning. “The only older man working there would be my husband, I think. Tall, brown hair, short cropped?”

“Yeah! That’s him,” Caduceus says, with seemingly no opinion beyond. He digs through the pouch until he finds a vial of greenish liquid, and turns to crouch over the young woman he had left previously, the one with a deep gash just above her collarbone.

As the glow from the coals dances over the woman’s red hair, something begins to gnaw at Jester.

“Miss Una,” she says finally, drawing closer, as one might draw close to an animal that may bolt. “You said you were from Blumenthal?”

“Yes?”

“How - when did you come to Druvenlode, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Oh,” she says, drawing out a small tilt of her head. “It’s been seventeen years, soon.”

“Hmm,” Jester says, hoping her nonchalance can pass for acknowledgement rather than processing her thought. She creeps further still. “Miss Una.”

Something begins to be wary about the woman’s eyes. “Yes, Jester?”

“Why did you and your husband come here?”

She tenses into rigid politeness, even as her crest falls:

“I - we. We were moved here, after the death of my son.”

“You were moved here? You didn’t move here yourselves?”

“Well, no, we were - this is really not something I would like to discuss, Jester,” says Una.

“Please, forgive me, but - it’s really, really important. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t.”

“We were offered to move, yes. My son was - he died at school. The Academy offered to relocate us, as recompense.” She tightens further, everywhere but her eyes. “It was difficult to leave, at first, but eventually the memories became too - strong, in that house. And so we accepted.”

“The Academy? The Soltryce Academy?”

“What is this about?” Una stands, and Jester sees Caduceus tense as well, before he finishes his work and slowly turns to face them.

“I can explain everything, I promise, I just - need to know. Your son was a mage? And he died - he died seventeen years ago?”

“Uh, Jester…” she hears Caduceus begin, and he approaches, but her focus is trained on the burning brown eyes of the red-haired woman before her. Una stares, stone-faced, calculating.

“Caduceus, this is like, critically important, I need you to trust me,” she says, and perhaps it is because she rarely speaks with such urgency, but he backs down, drawing slowly closer to her instead of between the two women. Jester plays her fingertips over the holy symbol at her belt, and murmurs a plea to the Traveler.

“Please, please forgive me, Miss Una,” she begs, and a shimmering green encircles the woman’s feet. She recoils with a sharp intake of breath. “Please answer my questions, and I promise promise I’ll explain everyhing.”

“Jester…” Caduceus warns again, voice rolling low and docile in an attempt to cool tempers.

“What is your name?” Una is still and silent.

“Please answer me.”

Quietly: “Una Ermendrud.” The white circle at her feet flares white briefly, then shrinks back to green.

“Is there any other name anyone else ever calls you?”

“No.” Another flare of white.

“Is there any other name anyone else has called you before?”

A brief pause before her next answer, “Una Kohler, before I was married.” Yet another white flare.

Jester’s voice quivers. “Your son died seventeen years ago.”

“My son is dead.” The circle burns white.

“Your son Bren. He has your hair.”

Jester feels a whipcrack surge between them as they lock eyes again. Confusion plays across grief plays across anger plays across love plays across guilt on Una’s face. “Please answer me.”

“Yes.” Once more, white.

Pain lodges at the back of Jester’s throat.

“Tell me a lie now, Miss Una.”

“Jester -”

“Please.”

“I - we. We live in R-” and the word rolls and rolls, but she cannot seem to finish it. The circle flares angrily red as she manages “-Rex-xen-trum”, and she stares down, understanding narrowing her eyes as the color fades back to green.

Jester pulls her last question like an arrow from her chest.

“How did he die?”

The whisper cuts over the patter of rain, the reedy keen of the wind:

“A fire. There was a fire.”

The circle momentarily flares white before Jester clenches her fist, and it disappears.

“There were other students, inside,” Una breathes, continuing. “He was - he went back -”

“I’m sorry, Miss Una, I’m sorry,” she says, resisting, “please don’t call the guards or anything, I can explain, I can -”

“You knew my son.”

Jester feels Caduceus’ hand warm her shoulder on her reply.

“I know your son.”

#widojest #liam o'brien don't read me please

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mystiika · 3 years

Text

re; hades’ ties with minthe & leuce

m i n t h e

to start, i do not acknowledge minthe as a lover or consort of hades. there are a few different depictions but i personally use the story that she tried to ( or at the very least intended to ) seduce him but was killed by persephone before she could succeed. & honestly i don’t blame persephone in the slightest.

minthe was a daughter of kokytos, said to be the most beautiful naiad-nymph, & was of mount mintha in elis ( southern greece ). she claimed she was more deserving of hades’ love than persephone, that she was superior in every way & went to the queen to gloat about how she was to steal hades away from her. in her anger, persephone turned her to dust. while he had no love for her, hades felt a sense of pity & it was from this dust that hades ( or persephone story depending ) caused hedyosmos ( mint ) to grow.

"For she had said that she was nobler of form and more excellent in beauty than dark-eyed Persephone and she boasted that Aidoneus would return to her and banish the other from his halls : such infatuation leapt upon her tongue. And from the earth spray the weak herb that bears her name." — Oppian, Halieutica 3. 485 ff (trans. Mair) (Greek poet C3rd A.D.)

"Near Pylos, towards the east, is a mountain named after Minthe, who, according to myth, [ claimed to be ] the concubine of Haides, was trampled under foot by Kore (Core) [Persephone], and was transformed into garden-mint, the plant which some call hedyosmos. Furthermore, near the mountain is a precinct sacred to Haides." — Strabo, Geography 8. 3. 14 (trans. Jones) (Greek geographer C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.)

& in one of the depictions where it was persephone that turned her to mint rather than hades: "Persephone of old was given grace to change a woman's [Mintha's] form to fragrant mint." — Ovid, Metamorphoses 10. 728 ff (trans. Melville) (Roman epic C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.)

the mint plant was also later closely associated with hades due to the fact that mint was likely used in ancient funerary rites to mask the smell of the dead & so came to be regarded as a sacred plant of his.

l e u c e

leuce is a more complicated topic. in terms of timing it seems like a lot of sources agree that leuce pre-dates persephone. there are many depictions where she is mentioned to be a close companion of persephone & we’re left to assume she was either a friend or servant but i genuinely just don’t think hades would go behind persephone’s back to sleep with a close confidant. this in turn means that i rely on a lot on the tales that imply that her time with hades pre-dates that of his marriage with persephone.

as for who leuce was, she was the daughter of oceanus & a simple nymph. she caught hades’ eye & so started an infatuation with her — him, as the result of her beauty, & her, as the result of his affections as well as the appeal of him as a god. hades, who had so little interest in the typical whims of most, took interest in her & his attention was flattering, of course, but more than that it made her feel special, it made her feel seen. but he was god of the underworld & had duties to attend to. he asked her to come with him to the underworld & naturally she agreed. it was there that she lived out the rest of her days, regrettably as a consort rather than a wife, but he still cared deeply for her. while he cared for her & gave her what he hoped was a happy life, she was still mortal & their time together was short. he wished he could extend her life but it would go against everything his role as a god stood for. so at the end of her life, he mourned her loss greatly & so hades turned her into a white poplar which he placed in the elysian fields.

these trees could be found in elysium as well as scattered around the living realm. beyond this story she has no role in mythology, she was simply a women who managed to capture the elusive heart of the god of the dead. additionally, to celebrate the hero heracles’ own return from the underworld, he crowned himself with a branch of this tree.

"Leuce was a nymph, a daughter of Oceanus, who was carried off by Hades. After her death she was changed into a white poplar in Elysium. The white poplar was sacred to Hades. When Heracles returned form the underworld, he was crowned with poplar leaves." — R. E. Bell, Women of Classical Mythology (sourced from Servius on Virgil's Eclogues 4.250)

"Herakles found the white poplar (leukê) growing on the banks of the Akheron (Acheron), the river in Thesprotia, and for this reason Homer calls it Akherois (Acherois). So from the first down to the present all rivers have not been equally suited for the growth of plants and trees. Tamarisks grow best and in the greatest numbers by the Maiandros (Meander) . . . So it is no wonder that the white poplar grew first by the Akheron." — Pausanias, Description of Greece 5. 14. 2 (trans. Jones) (Greek travelogue C2nd A.D.)

#minthe #leuce #metas — the gap between understanding & misunderstanding can best be bridged by thought #npcs — people will come & go‚ but the right ones will always stay #hades. character study — knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom #the greek pantheon — παρ' όλα αυτά είμαστε οικογένεια #greek mythology explained — unripe grape gets sweet as honey‚ at a slow pace

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2ofswords · 4 years

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for your analysis meme: clara

This is going to be so much fun and so very tough, because Clara is such an amazingly complicated character! God, I love her so much but part of that is because she is very ambivalent and hard to describe. She is one of these characters where you can find an opposite trait for every other one she has (which is kind of the point of her). Also: I still haven’t played the Changeling route in Patho1 and I have a stronger understanding of the Patho2 universe… so bear with me. I will try my best to analyse our favorite saint.

their biggest strength

I needed to think a while about this one and the term that stuck with me was attentive cleverness. Because I really couldn’t decide if I wanted to call her attentive or clever and luckily these two can be combined into something, I find pretty precise for what I want to describe. Clara is very clever and has a lot of knowledge that not really anyone else in the patho-universe can gain (or at least the amount of it, people share bits and pieces). She is the healer most aware of the meta-narrative and at least in routes that aren’t hers is telling you either that she knows more than you do or straight out telling you something, you needed to know (and probably didn’t want to). As is obvious by her focus on hands and talking her main skill is also interaction with other people… but I think a lot of it comes from the fact, that Clara is a good listener. Which seems to be counter-intuitive because listening is assigned as Artemy’s domain in the artbook, but I think the other word used – rhythms – is pretty important here. Artemy’s skill is finding connections, intuit solutions as well as similarities and differences (there is a reason he realizes his similarities to Aglaya’s description of the inquisition) and gaining cultural knowledge that he then transforms into practical and usable abilities. Clara’s “listening” is more about singular people’s well-being and personal struggle. (She is like a good therapist. If your therapist wanted to convert you into a sacrificial religion. ^^) She interacts with her surroundings directly and attentively. I mean, she is very well informed very early on without really having a live before that or at least not in town (again, I did not play the changeling route yet and do not know her origins or how ambiguous they are kept at the end. Either way, she arrives in town at the beginning of the game and navigates her way pretty well.) However only calling her attentive sounds like the trait is a passive one which is not something I mean. Both her personas as a saint and a thief use her knowledge that is gained by being attentive in unconventional ways and/or for unconventional means. As noted in the beginning, Clara is very clever and that in combination with her noticing even small discrepancies and listening to people makes her able to peek behind the curtain of the game in the first place. It also helps to get yourself into places people normally wouldn’t want a teenage girl to be and Clara knows and is fully willing to use this ability. It is both the reason why she knows so much more about the greater scope of the disaster and also why she always seems to be able to get into any place she wants to. By the way, just as an afterthought: Of course that ability doesn’t come and is in fact enhanced by empathy. I do not think, Clara is listening to people only to use them and to gain information. You can genuinely be willing to listen to someone and still use the information you get out of these conversations. Listening carefully and actively engaging with other people is a great part of that strength!

their greatest weakness

Does “not being able to hold a knife when the town wants you dead” count as a weakness? Okay seriously, I have a really hard time to put what I consider her weakness into one expressive term. So I will talk about it first at length and then we will see. What caught my mind first was ironically Clara’s problems with communication. That might be the case because, yes, I still haven’t played her route, so I am working mostly on her ways of communication with the other healers. But Clara really has a lot of strong points that she has trouble getting across or acknowledged. Sometimes that is definitely not her fault and one of her problems is, that she is not taken seriously by other people. But trying to persuade someone to their cause and emphasizing the reason with an elaborate monologue how the other healers are demons. Daniil was genuinely asking, why you wrote your letter about your destiny, it’s fine! Same happens in Pathologic 2. Saying someone to stay put when they are in a pretty bad spot already is not a bad idea and Artemy is pretty open to both warnings and clairvoyance in general but saying. “Nope, do literally nothing even if you know you want to, I am a better doctor anyways” is… yeah hurting him in his professional pride isn’t exactly a smart move. Often it feels like she really has a chance to explain and the other healers would probably listen but then there is just a terrible miscommunication. (Which is a thing for all of the healers but Clara I-am-going-to-call-your-father-a-horrible-person-while-we-are-at-his-funeral Saburova… Look, it might be true but it is also hilarious.) But putting communication skills here would still be weird, since… you know… she is pretty good at communicating in different ways! And also all three healers are pretty prone to miscommunication albeit in different ways and for different reasons… So I think we have to dig a bit deeper still… So why is this happening and hindering her? There are multiple reasons to come to this conclusion. One I would call childlike stubbornness. (Which btw. Is also one of her strengths, but… it is Clara, everything is also its opposite. God I love her so much, she is just so hard to describe, it’s amazing!) Even with all of her wisdom and cleverness… Clara is still a child. As she should be, it makes her so much more interesting! But she also has this childlike quality of just… assuming people will completely understand and accept what she is trying to see and getting frustrated the moment it doesn’t happen. This is one of her contradictions. She is so very attentive, and she can touch other people with her hands as well as her words, but she also is inexperienced and doesn’t really know a lot about the world or about how to socially approach people which can be a big problem, if she desperately needs someone to listen. The other argument would be about her role in the plot and the way she regards her own role as well as the other healers. She is the most aware one and she does indeed know a solution to the dilemma of the story (if we do not conclude that this is a three way battle, but I exclude my thoughts about the factions themselves for this. She definitely though knows how to get rid of the town vs. polyhedron conflict) but this also puts her in direct opposition to both healers. Which… you know is completely fair and not a weakness. But, she is very uncompromising about this and while all of them are – at least when they are not the main protagonists – Clara is the most unmoving and also uncompromising of the three, telling everyone always very directly how she things the others are shit. Which again, is very justified but becomes a big problem when she needs help and makes it harder for her to express her own thoughts, even if they are very justified and might even help all parties. Speaking in riddles and of concepts beyond something we would see as our reality surely doesn’t help there either.

a headcanon about their childhood

Oh dear, tbh I am not even sure how metaphorical she just crawled out of the earth at the beginning of the game and if she even has a proper childhood… I think it is pretty literal but there are allusions in Patho2 that she actually has a past? At least she speaks about it and I guess it can be as made up as real. (A classic Clara move ^^) And having no defined past is kind of a big thing for her so… sorry, no childhood headcanon here.

a headcanon about their future (if they have one)

Again, I am not really sure if she stays in town or leaves with Block and I have read fanfiction with both, so I am not sure if there is a consensus in fandom either… If she stays in town I imagine her still being with the Saburovs but I do not know, if I really like this headcanon, since abandoning your newly found orphan in the middle of a plague is really something that should revoke parent rights… But on the other thing the position among the mistresses seems to still be pretty defined at least in the endings in Patho 2. I like to see her travelling with Block at least for a while. Maybe not at the front, that would be just… bad. But she also seems like the person who would just poke their head around at random intervals and nobody really knows, when she will get back and somehow Clara still knows exactly what is going on in town… Still she also seems pretty bound to the place and she has business there… it’s a tough call. She will definitely fire up the rivalry of the mistresses by a lot though. Probably even if she is just there for a second, she would definitely sow some mischief between Capella and Maria! Another triad of petty politics for her! Yay?

a small detail/scene that leaves a great impact

Oh dear, every scene she is in is just so impactful! (Also never knowing which Clara is with you right now (if there even is a difference) doesn’t make this easier...) I really like her quest in Artemy’s run, where she is upset about not knowing what exactly she is in the first place… but that is not really a small details or scene. Same goes for the cathedral and her offer to meet the inquisitor together with Dankovsky to stand up for that whole disaster. Which is still a really heroic but also not really a small scene and there is nothing to talk about there aside from “man, is Clara brave and set on doing the right thing!” I also think the letter about her ending is really interesting because it is just so out there and giving all of her bound a demonic nickname is just so over the top, but tbh all of the ending letters are very… passionate. So this might be more the games writing even if they lampshade it and talk to each other like the other one is the only healer in town who wrote a completely insane letter… But I digress. While I love Clara’s Patho1 design, I will say that I love her shaved hair in Patho2 and the commentary the artbook has for it. Seeing it as a sign of sickness or a deliberate mark of sainthood is just so on point for her! It is a really nice visual piece for her characterization and I also think putting the beany on top of it makes it even better. It is contradicting but firstly she deliberately kind of tries to hide her own contradictions (I mean, it is not part of her! It is just the sister, she is wrong!), which is also a nice added detail. Also, she might combine contradicting elements, but god, she is doing it with style!

their philosophy/worldview (or part of it) described in one neat little sentence

I am throwing the towel! How should this even work with Clara??? She has different philosophies and worldviews! Also, I think they differ a bit between the first and second game. The first one aligns a lot with the humble faction from what we hear but in the second game her dialogue alludes more vaguely to touching and changing people and not necessarily to “The right people must die for our world to continue” which is most of what I heard from her. Hm… How about: A saint’s duty is to touch the immoral and diseased, thus one can never rid themselves of all dirt. I am not that happy with this one, but… at least it has the whole touching other people thing in it and it is about good people not being pure, which also is a theme with her. It still sounds a bit judgemental and I don’t really like this emphasis of the “dirtied” but… I mean this is what Clara talks about in her letter, so I still think it fits, even if I would dare to say that she shows a lot more compassion than this sentence shows.

#pathologic #pathologic clara #the changeling #Clara Saburova #Which tags are we using for Clara???

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