#Is this evolution??? Like innate????? Idk it feels like it

[forwomenbiwomen]

please excuse me 😭🙏

[paragonrobits]

one thing on my mind lately is the whole question of dragon design and discourse about it online that is largely focused on two points:

I really, REALLY fucking hate it when people online go 'dragons with winged forelimbs/two legs two wings aren't REAL DRAGONS, THEY'RE WYVERNS'. It is right up there with my all time list of things that make me blow RIGHT THE FUCK UP. Part of it is that this is a summation of really annoying nitpickiness or arbitrarily applying one setting's definitions to all of fiction, and it is ENTIRELY to do with one smartass youtuber who made fun of Reign of Fire by spending the entire review insisting they weren't REAL dragons, they were wyverns. I honestly love the two legs two wings designs for dragons, and I really can't stand that there's so many people online that get nitpicky about it (It also feels like it comes from the exact same place as the awesomebros that outright try to deny all paleotology findings because they think that dinosaurs having feathers, or having complicated social groups, or anything that makes them actual animals instead of movie monsters 'ruins them'.)

It's a really weird line to draw with dragons, because I favor the idea that they're not really naturally occuring animals but intensely, innately magical creatures, but dragons with four legs and two wings raise up a lot of really interesting and weird biological questions if they're assumed to evolve naturally; the majority of wings, outside arthopods as far as I know, are modified limbs. A bird's wings are modified forelimbs. So did the wings on a dragon with this design come from? A whole new set of limbs with the skeletal and muscle structure to accomodate it is a LOT of work in evolution and its not something with any precedent in the animal kingdom I can accept a lot from dragon biology without questioning it; I can expect flight on a multi-ton beast and heavy armored scales despite the weight increases, or them BREATHING FIRE without issue; magic can resolve a lot of these issues or negate them entirely. But for some reason having an additional set of wings raised a LOT of questions and I think a lot about how to figure out how that happened, biologically, but besides 'modified ribs??' that doesn't QUITE seem to line up with how they're usually depicted as being an extra set of limbs, and idk. It's confusing

[halfbakedspuds]

One of the most terrifying parts about echoes of Shadows is that no one really knows what magic is or how it works.

The most popular theory in universe is that it's the result of a type of dormant evolution trait; that we've had the ability as an innate part of our species basically forever but some hitherto unidentified conditions have made it start to flare up again.

Of course, when you look at it in this light: a world where half the population can do things like reforming metal or conducting storms or molding flesh with as little strain as you or I would feel solving a mathematical equation (challenging to varying degrees depending on the action, the person, and their skill level, but always at least theoretically possible) and when you look at what the handful of freakishly powerful mages have been capable of already, you have to wonder:

If this is evolution, then what unseen threat is magic an adaptation to?

Idk actually, a friend pointed this out to me the other day and now it feels like the sort of thing that needs to be explored. Of course, evolution is only one theory, there are others and maybe none of them need to be correct.

[wykart]

I AM LOOKING HARD AT YOUR ZENITH BETA ARTWORK I've always kind of disliked the idea of zenith!Beta because I feel like the strongest and most compelling aspect of Aloy and Beta's sibling relationship was how Aloy is Beta's Rost. She is now the few-worded, directive, somewhat brooding protector to her assigned charge. And despite the debatable blood relations, their family. It's a prefect way to wrap up Aloy's arc and showcase how deeply important they are to each other. They NEED either other. I felt like Zenith!Beta storylines took away from that because if Beta already has the skills to basically overpower the world that Aloy struggled and struggled to conquer. (This option is subjective, people are allowed to like this trope even if I normally don't.)

BUT, BUT--- The premise you have set seems SUPER FUCKING INTERESTING. The hinted at the dynamic between Beta and Tilda. OH MY GOD, and Aloy basically having to slowly "wake" Beta up from that delusion. Oh, baby. I always give extra appreciation to creaters who can take a trope/take/plot that I don't like and make me fall in love. You haven't even written anything yet (or showcased stuff u have written), yet I'm passionate about it all the same. That being said, don't pressure yourself to make this idea of yours a reality just cuz I would love to see it. It is your story and there are many more important things in life than fictional characters (unfortunately). I just wanted to take the time to let you know how much I appreciate your WIPs and works (both art and writing) <3

Hi!! Thanks!! Honestly your problem with zenith!Beta is about the same as mine (not that I’ve read anything that’s out there). She is so essential for Aloy’s development and the story of FW in general. Also I love Beta and this AU is just hey what if everything about her was different? Your point about Aloy being Beta’s Rost is also 👌

That said, this time Aloy’s realisation about not being some sorta spiritual carbon copy of an innately righteous and strong person, and that actually her family and friends and choices made her and she has an identity of her own, comes not from Beta being seemingly ‘weak’ and stuck in hopelessness and dependent on others, but from Beta acting straight up evil. This person is the opposite of everything Aloy believes Elisabet was (and therefore made her). She’s like, how could a clone of Elisabet be so apathetic? she’s so mean 😭. Forces her to look inward in other ways haha.

Then of course it’s not reaalllly like that bc Beta is so completely brainwashed that she just doesn’t get it, and Aloy slowly realises that too. She’s stunted in a very different way to canon Beta, and comes in confusion to concepts like empathy and trust and hope from an antagonistic angle rather than a compassionate one. Which makes her the most annoying person ever to exist. The Tilda relationship is also Worse. As you can imagine.

I’ve written like a tiny tiny opening for this and have some rough notes, but it’d be long :( and I’m like do I realllyyy want to write another long story about a sobeck clone interfacing w zenith tech. And Tilda, can I bear to write more of that asshole? I’m not sure. That said it would be different stylistically bc I want to do first person (idk if you’ve read the Murderbot diaries, but those are the vibes). It’s an opposite character evolution from against the lightning in a way lol. I reckon I still want to write it

Buttt many more important things than fictional characters (unfortunately), as you say. So sad. I had (was forced) to take a few weeks off work a couple months back and spent almost the whole time just writing. I was so pumped about this other story and was like surely I’ll keep this up. Haven’t fuckin looked at it. Work is 😫. And I’m looking for a new job. Ugh. I am a constant knot of anxiety.

Anyway! Thanks so much!! Feel free to dm as well if you want to discuss further haha, I’d love the excuse

[septembersghost]

Why do you like the character of Jimmy Mcgill so much, what makes him such a good interesting protagonist to follow? Do you love Walter White as much as Jimmy ?

By the way, I love your blog, your analyses! Long live Kim Wexler and Mcwexler! ❤

if anything suggests i have any love whatsoever for walter white, i have been doing my job here entirely incorrectly adljkgfkjhgh

walt is a great character - monstrously compelling, brilliantly acted (bryan was lauded for a reason!), and while i definitely have discussed his evolution (or devolution, as it were) and the fact that at times i still find tattered remnants of sympathy for him and tragic fallibility from him, i'd also push him off a cliff without hesitation. i posted a tweet a while back that said something like, "breaking bad is full of characters i love to watch, better call saul is full of characters i love," and that (with the exclusion of jesse) sums it up fairly succinctly for me, and is why - as a character person first and foremost - i'm far more emotionally attached to bcs. i think breaking bad is ultimately narratively stronger (i didn't expect to say this), but better call saul made me love and care about its players so deeply that it's the best at character study. (obviously these are completely subjective opinions, and in many ways the shows are quite different and difficult to compare because their strengths and highlights play for varying reasons!)

jimmy, on the other hand...there are things that maybe should've turned me on jimmy (scamming, lying), but they just. didn't. part of me wonders if it's my affinity and empathy for kim coming through since kim loves him, and because of how i feel regarding their story and aching romance together, but even beyond that, in jimmy's better qualities, in his relationship with his brother, in the way he does try, but is so doomed in his story before it even begins...his character and shifting identity and place in his narrative universe is gripping and sympathetic to me. such a huge part of it is bob's performance - someone else probably would've played him sleazier or more arrogant, but bob managed to take him from the garish comic relief in brba to a man struggling inwardly with his sense of self, with his worth, with his darker impulses vs. his innate affability, someone who has such heart and pathos that it's devastating and horrible watching him erode. the fact that he's capable not only of humor but also of kindness and vulnerability, and yet opposite that weaponizes his likability and his intelligence and his trauma to harmful effect, the way the narrative convinced us to root for him and want better for him even though we knew where he was headed, it works in such a powerful way. a very human way. i feel like we got to know jimmy in a much more intimate sense - there's a wall between us and walt from the beginning, often a violent one, but jimmy in his crummy little nail salon office feels accessible. jimmy pining for love and acceptance feels more tangible than power hunger. jimmy lashing out and curling into himself hurts, jimmy making decisions to reclaim his name and find some piece of himself (or peace in himself) and a delicate reconnection with the woman he loves, his one person in the world, infused with such loss and melancholy, is bittersweet and haunting.

walt is always on a collision course with death, but it's as though jimmy is always on a collision course with life, with choosing how, even after harm and self-loathing and tragedy, one continues to seek to live. there's an irrepressible spirit in jimmy somehow. in kim too. a flickering flame in darkness. it isn't much, but it's something eternal in spite of the odds.

i'm not explaining this well, but idk! i just feel such an enormous amount of love and sorrow for him. and he's my pathetic bestie

thank you so much, lovely, i am very happy you're here. 💗 kim wexler for life!!! mcwexler in love forever and ever!!!!!!

[mallowstep]

Mistyfoot has long since been my favorite character in Warriors, (originally I liked her as a child bc she reminded me of my aunt who is named Misty but besides the point) and I love her characterization in your fics. How does Mothwing's atheism and Mistystar's reaction to it play out in your fic, if it plays out at all?

it's...complicated.

i'm always tweaking my own understanding of mothwing's atheism, because like. i don't know i was talking with a friend about her as well as atheism and the nature of religion and.

okay on topic: atheism is not like. at least in the us, we tend to think of atheism as like...a monolith? there is a way to be atheist. it means one thing. but that's not true? heck, i'm an atheist and i'm also like. have a religion. life and people are complicated.

so. you know like. what does it mean for mothwing to be atheist? that's not really relevant to this conversation, i just like to bring it up.

what is relevant is: the whole mistystar's omen thing just Doesn't happen. like. yeah Mistystar Would Definitely Forcibly Retire Mothwing /s

mothwing doesn't have the same relationship to religion as she does in canon. i have a pretty good sense of what she believes in (my) canon atm, but that's what she learns from sasha. it's not applicable here. the only religion she'd be exposed to is the clans' religion.

which. is so much more than just starclan. the clans are...similar to medieval england in how much religion is a part of their life. i actually think that's a good comparison. like, religion is the framework of their everything. the king/leader gets their authority from god/starclan, and even if they're Kind of above the church/medicine cats, they're also not in a lot of ways.

but at the same time, your average peasant/warrior isn't thinking of religion the way we do now in the us. i'm not going to do a great job of explaining this, because i've tried and i don't, but you know. if you're a peasant, you go to church because it's what you do. the service is in latin, you don't understand it. there is a holy day. you might sleep in the church if you lose your home/are travelling, or go there for medical care.

it's a very good analogy for the clans tbh. (i think honestly, the clans are deeply reminiscent of feudal england. for good and bad. that's a different subject tho.)

so with that in mind, mothwing is a religious leader and authority, regardless of what she believes. like her role in her community is far beyond "i get omens and prophecies," it's also her job to perform various ceremonies and rain stuff and announce the changing of the seasons and all sorts of things.

(to be clear for anyone who's new here, this is my own worldbuilding bc otherwise the role of medicine cat doesn't make sense, but again, that's a different topic.)

so. i don't actually generally disagree with mistystar's omen in Theory. i didn't enjoy it, but i think the concept of it would have been fine, the erins just don't seem to have a very good understanding of how atheism works in a society without science and with a religion that's deeply tied to every aspect of culture.

which is. bad. it's Understandable but like. god. i was raised in...i don't know what the best words to describe it are? but i was raised in a church that's very different to american evangelicalism, and at one point i was having a conversation with someone about how i went to a meeting of the church elders with a few other kids my age to discuss a pride banner

and he just. couldn't comprehend that. because i was like 12 at the time. and i don't think he had a confirmation? i don't think he had the concept of like. writing an essay about your faith to read in front of the deacons. i don't know. anyway i'm getting off-topic but i swear this is relevant.

so okay but. the thing is. when i understood that fundamental difference, his reaction to MY behaviours started to make a lot more sense. like, he didn't understand my relationship to authority, because we had a very different upbringing in that sense.

and most people i went to high school with were with him. like, the concept of. i don't know. it's not that i have a disrespect for authority, it's that every way i was raised says that authority isn't innately respectful. like, i was Encouraged to challenge my parents if i thought they were wrong.

there was a time when i got really angry with a teacher because of a reason that's a whole different story, but everyone was like, "well, matthew, he's the teacher so..." but the thing is that was just not how i was raised. i was raised in, we are all on the same footing. and yes, this is deeply tied to religion,

because these values come from religion.

so the point of this is even after i...became? idk? even after i started calling myself an atheist, that value and background didn't disappear. and a lot of it is deeply religious.

so: you know, mothwing meets with her father in the dark forest. it's not like she doesn't believe that she's meeting with him. it's just that she doesn't ascribe it to the clan's belief system.

and in that way, you know, as a medicine cat, she's still going to. do the religious tasks associated with her. (the concept of religion as a tool to explain things that are good for survival is yet another topic.)

ANYWAY TO THE ACTUAL POINT: how does mistystar tie into all of this?

well, pretty well, actually. mistyfoot struggles a lot with her relationship to starclan. she feels like starclan has failed her. and when feathertail goes on the prophecy quest, and mistyfoot realizes that like, feathertail was chosen because the tribe had a prophecy that feathertail was supposed to fulfill, that knowing that feathertail was going to die, starclan still chose her

mistyfoot is Quite Reasonably Pissed

but you know. it's not like the cats understand evolution. so rejecting starclan ("atheism") is not the same thing as rejecting all of the clans' religious beliefs.

mistystar and mothwing have very similar relationships to religion. they both struggle with starclan's failure to protect cats, as well as feeling rejected by starclan for various reasons.

so.

uh.

hope that answers your question? sorry i rambled so long and barely talked about mistyfoot?

here's an excerpt from pre-po3 times as an apology:

“Running won’t help, Mothwing.”

“I’m not running.” But Mothwing looks at her feet, and Mistyfoot thinks, You can’t hide this one from me.

“You’re thinking about it, at least. It won’t help.”

“I don’t have options.”

“Feathertail’s mother ran,” Mistyfoot says. “And died.” It has been a long time since Mistyfoot has thought of Silverstream. Their fathers were brothers, they were sisters, and now Silverstream’s daughter is hers.

“It’s not like that runs in me,” Mothwing says, with a sharp, biting laugh that’s all Feathertail.

“Go back to sleep,” Mistyfoot says. “Things will seem better in the morning.”

[queenlua]

You're a druid and an ex-evangelical, right? What does being a druid mean to you? How did you get from evangelicalism to where you are now? And of course feel free to ignore this if it's nosy. (sincerely, a Christian who wants to leave but who doesn't know what to do)

this is going to make me sound ignorant as hell, lol, but i'm happy to share

under a cut because this got very long, sorry, lol.

my personal progression was: "vaguely christian -> VERY christian -> christian agnostic -> agnostic/atheist -> agnostic/druid -> some sorta druid-neopagan-animist thing."  i guess i'll just go through what made me switch between each of those, and close out with some high-level thoughts that may be helpful for you?

okay, so when i was

VAGUELY CHRISTIAN,

i went to Sunday school every week because That's What You Do, and because my whole hometown was very southern Baptist, i never questioned the veracity of its teachings much... until they ran a whole weekly series on "why [x] is wrong," where [x] is some other group

e.g., we had a week on why Mormons are wrong, and i didn't bat an eye because i hadn't even known Mormons existed until that moment

then we had a week on why Muslims are wrong, and that... bothered me, because i had a friend who was Muslim, and she was just objectively a better person than me, and i was like "any universe where she goes to hell and i don't seems really fucked up"

then we had a week on why EVOLUTION was wrong, and that just absolutely threw me, because while i hadn't thought about evolution much (i think i was in fourth grade or so), it seemed common-sense? scientists thought highly of it? "adaptation over time" just seems logical?

so i went to the public library every day after school for like a week, read some Darwin and some science books, and came back to my Sunday school teacher with, like, an itemized list of objections to the whole "evolution is wrong" thing.  and he came up with some standard Answers In Genesis rebuttals, and i did more research and came back the next week with more science, and we repeated this a few times until he was like "lua, you just gotta take some things on faith"

which.  lmao.  full existential crisis time, because no matter how hard i thought, i couldn't *not* believe in the science, but i also didn't want to go to hell, so i was like "maybe if i believe SUPER HARD i will SOMEDAY be able to unbelieve the condemn-me-to-hell bits"

so i decided to become

VERY CHRISTIAN

and my frantic googling for shit like "proof of god" and "god and evolution" *eventually* broke me out of the Answers In Genesis circles of the internet, and into some decent Christian apologia, like, think First Things and various Catholic bloggers.  and there, i found some way to square my gut sense that evolution was right, with a spiritual worldview.

like, i remember finding some blogger who said:

"young earth creationists get tripped up when they try to explain stars that are millions of light-years away, and end up basically arguing that God's tricking us somehow, and���no!  my God lets you believe in the evidence of your eyes, my God does not demand that you make yourself ignorant or stupid, my God expects you to use your brain"

and i just started crying at my computer, because no one had ever said "using your brain is Good and part of God's will," i was like *finally* here's someone who won't tell me i'm going to hell for just *thinking* about things

(st. augustine does a much better riff on a similar theme, fwiw, but i only found him later)

still, it was an uneasy fit, because, the more i learned and read about world history, the more it seemed... weird... that the One And Singular Path To Salvation was... the successor to some niche desert cult... which didn't even occur at the *beginning* of written history, like, it was all predated by that whole Mithraism thing, etc... and like, sure, i could trot out all the standard theological talking points for why Actually This Makes Perfect Sense, but gut-level-wise, the aesthetics just seemed kinda dumb!  and no level of talking myself out of it made that feeling go away!

so at this point i started referring to myself as a

CHRISTIAN AGNOSTIC

i mean, not aloud.  i still lived in southernbaptistopia and i didn't want, like, my hair stylist to tell me i was a horrible person.  but in my *head* i called myself Christian agnostic and it felt right.

and i started church-hopping, which honestly was really fun, would recommend to anyone at any point.  i visited the fire-and-brimstone baptist church, the methodist church, the episcopalians, the universal unitarians, etc.

unfortunately, while this gave me *some* new perspectives, each of the places either had the same shitty theology as my old megachurch (i remember the *acute* sense of despair i felt when i was starting to jive with a methodist church... only for the dumbass youth minister to start going on about evolution), or, they just lacked any sense of the *sacred*.  like, the Church of Christ churches, with their a capella services, *definitely* had it; i felt more God there in one service than i did in a lifetime of shitty Christian rock at the megachurch.  but their beliefs were even *more* batshit, so.  big L on that one.

having failed to find a satisfactory church, i was basically

AGNOSTIC/ATHEIST

by the time i went to college, but honestly pretty unhappy about it; while it was harder than ever for me to actually *connect* with the divine, i didn't like thinking that my previous experiences of the divine were total lies.  because my shitty evangelical church, for all its faults, could not *completely* sabotage the sense of God's presence.  there were real moments in that church where i do believe i experienced something divine.  mostly mediated by one particular youth minister, who in hindsight was the only spiritual teacher in that church who didn't seem a bit rotten inside, but!  it was something!

so when i happened upon a bunch of writings on the now-defunct shii.org (that's the bit that makes me look WILDLY ignorant, lol), i was utterly captivated.

said author was a previous archdruid of the Reformed Druids of North America, an organization that was formed in the 1960s to troll the administration of Carleton College (there was a religious-service-attendance requirement; they made their own religion; their religion had whiskey and #chilltimes for its services).  however, this shii.org dude seemed to take it pretty seriously.  he was studying history of religion and blogged a lot about his studies, both academic and otherwise.  while RDNA had started out as a troll, that didn't mean they hadn't *discovered* something real in the process, he said.

this, already, was going to be innately appealing to me; i've got a soft spot for wow-we-were-doing-this-ironically-but-now-it's-kinda-real? stuff in general.

in particular, shii.org’s discussions on the separation of ritual from belief was really interesting to me: most religions/spiritualities have *both*, but like, you can do a ritual without having the Exact Right Beliefs (if there even is such a thing!), and it can still be useful to you, it can have real power.  (he had a really lovely essay, speculating on the origins of religion as just a form of art, but that essay is now lost to the sands of time, alas.)

(note that i wouldn't really recommend seeking out *recent* writing by the shii.org guy; he kinda went full tedious neoreactionary-blowhard-who-reads-a-lot-of-Spengler at some point?  sigh.)

the shii.org guy led me to checking out a bunch of books on the history of neopaganism & also books by scholars of religion in general, and the more i read, the more excited i became.  and i started doing little ritual/meditation stuff here and there.

then i was fortunate enough to attend some events with Earthspirit (this was when i lived in Boston), which cemented my hippie dalliances into something more real.  the folks there, being from Boston, were all ridiculously overeducated (a sensibility that appeals to me), but also, being the kind of folks who drive out to a mountain in the middle of nowhere for a spiritual retreat, they tolerated a full range of oddities (everyone from aging-70s-feminist-wiccans to living-on-a-farm-with-your-bros-Astaru to dude-who-started-having-weird-visions-and-is-just-trying-to-figure-out-the-deal to Nordic-spiritualist-with-two-phds-from-Scandanavian-universities-on-the-subject, etc), which gave me a lot of room to explore different types of rituals, ceremonies, "magic", etc.

(polytheism in general lends itself well to this sort of easy plurality!  i can believe other people are experiencing something real with their gods, and i can be talking to a totally different set of gods, and that’s just all very compatible, etc)

anyway, i started calling myself

AGNOSTIC/DRUID

around then, because i knew i'd found *something*, something that felt like all the realest moments i'd ever had in nature, and all the realest moments i'd ever had in that shitty megachurch, but i wasn't quite ready to put a theology to it.

but, idk, you do the thing for a while, and you start encountering some things that you may as well call gods, and you realize you're in pretty deep, and you ditch the "agnostic" bit and just throw hands and start describing yourself as

SOME SORTA DRUID-NEOPAGAN-ANIMIST THING

because that's the most precise thing you can muster.  in particular, the druid bit resonates because nature's still very much at the center of my practice; the neopagan bit resonates because i'm not especially interested in reconstructing older traditions or being faithful to any actual pre-Christian traditions, and animist resonates because what i sometimes call gods seem to be tied pretty tightly to the land itself.  it's all very experiential; all this mostly means i'm some weird chick who sometimes grabs a car and drives out someplace very lonely and hikes for a while and does some hippie shit to try and talk with the land or the god or whatever is there.  and sometimes i come back from it changed, or refocused, or what-have-you, and hopefully i'm better for it.  i'm aware this makes me look a little ridiculous, and is an unsatisfying answer, sorry!

WRT YOUR SITUATION

i don't know you or your situation, obviously, but if i wanted to give former-me some advice to save her some angst, i'd say

-> Christendom itself is far wilder and more diverse than many churches lead you to believe.  if you still want to be Christian on some level, and it's just a shitty church that's convinced you the whole project is fucked, i'd honestly explore, i dunno, your nearest Quaker meeting.  they're invoking the Holy Spirit with regularity but they're not raging douchenozzles about it.

-> if you're specifically interested in druidism, i found John Michael Greer's "A World Full of Gods" really nice.  (caveat: Greer has *also* gone full right-wing nutjob these days, sigh, so like.  would not recommend a great swath of his writing.  but that one's good)

-> deciding that a just God wouldn't give me a brain and then ask me not to use it was hugely comforting to me.  like, that was the start of the whole process, that was what made me feel ok searching for other churches and trying to find something that fit.  obviously you should take this with 800 grains of salt, because obviously i'm no longer Christian, and thus maybe i'm just some poor misguided fallen soul, but... i still kinda believe that!  maybe if you can make yourself believe that, it'll seem less scary?

idk, happy to answer more questions, sorry for the long ramble, hope it helped~

[moodygroundhog]

I have a theory that the Witcher and Star Wars are related.

Power/Force/Magic

The key role is assigned to the Force in the Witcher and the SW either.

In this theory, we can put an equal sign between Magic and Power. In Sapkowski's books, mages often use (at least in Russian translation) these two concepts as synonyms. Also, there are Places of Power both in books and in games.

Yennefer talked about magic (=power) like this: "In the end, magic is all three of the above. It is Art, Chaos, and Science: a blessing, a curse, and progress. It all depends on who calls upon it, and for what purpose.

Magic stems from nature. It is on the earth we walk upon, in the fire burning in its heart, in the air we breathe, and in the water, which brings life and which flows within us. If you happen to be gifted with the particular talent, all you need do is reach out your hand and grasp the magic all around you".

Obi-Wan characterized the Force like that: "Well, the Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together".

Some signs from the Witcher are similar to the use of Force in SW (Axii=telepathy, Aard=telekinetic thrust, etc.). The use of magic will be discussed a bit later.

The Conjunction of the Spheres

As there is not correct description anywhere about what exactly happened during the Conjunction of Spheres, and about what kind of cataclysm it was, it can be assumed that there was an interaction between the planets (for example the Parade of planets) or some other cosmic influence (cosmic radiation emission idk) that caused mutations in Neverland and make new creatures to appear. Or, on some other more advanced planets, there were some catastrophes, during which the creatures had the opportunity to use hyperspace jumps and get to the lands of Neverland. Moreover, many monsters look like those that could easily exist in the world of SW.

However, during the Conjunction, not only monsters appeared on the planet where Neverland is located.

Elves

The first race that arrived after the Conjunction of the Spheres was the elves. They arrived by ship. What ship???? Obviously, the descendants could interpret this as water transport, but what if they were spaceships? Moreover, they arrived after the thinning of the borders between the worlds, which may indicate that they overcame the interspatial and intertemporal barriers, that is possible only at supersonic speed. And they came from another world - another planet. It is said that their previous world was destroyed. Probably the same with cataclysm.

In addition to this evidence, elves can travel between worlds through portals - through hyperspace. In general, the elves are quite a developed race, they use quite unusual inventions, so I think they could have created some kind of spaceship.

It is known that elves (and their descendants who have the blood of elves) are predisposed to use the Power (=Force), which means they could be the first Jedi. About the elves said: "Their culture symbolizes calmness, seriousness and control of their emotions" (translation from Russian page about Elves on The Witcher Wiki).

And as we know, Jedi are required to control their psyche and achieve control over their inner world, then use the Force wisely.

There are Elven-like Jedi in the SW, such as Yoda. However, he is certainly very different from the elves from the Witcher. But if we assume that the elves were even more suppressed by the people of Neverland and in the end, they had to leave this planet forever, then it is quite possible that on another planet they evolved, adapting to new conditions. So, there was a modified race - the race to which Yoda and Grogu belong. Almost nothing is known about this race, but so far, all representatives have the ability to interact with the Force (in movies and games, all the “relatives" of Yoda are Jedi, and Grogu also has skills of controlling the Force in Mandalorian). Moreover, they are as long-lived as the elves, which again can prove their kinship. And the small number of these individuals only confirms that it could be the descendants of escaped elves (and there were not many of them left in the Witcher), and during the evolution, the number has decreased significantly.

Plus:

People

Humans arrived in Neverland on three arks ~700 years after the elves. Again, these could be space rescue ships that were sent from a dying planet during the Conjunction. And it took such a long time to fly to a new planet. Probably, the question arises, why then do the people who arrived, who arrived on spaceships, have a medieval level of development? This can be explained by the banal fact that, firstly, not a single generation has changed for a long time spent on the ship in space, and they did not have new resources. Most likely, it was necessary to start development anew, with an almost primitive system. And secondly, it can be assumed that when entering the atmosphere of a new planet, the arks could be damaged and they were useful only ordinary boats. Well, I think during the cataclysm, people did not have enough time to launch some cool fancy spaceship. The very word "ark " suggests that this is a life raft, it has a minimum of equipment, which is enough only to support life.

Magicians

In SW it says that the Force is in everyone and some creatures are more able to feel it and control it than others. In the Witcher, it is said that some people are able to feel the Power of Chaos, learn to use it, and over time, such people became magicians. We can say that they were also a kind of Jedi. They could heal, use telepathy, move objects with the power of thought, etc. Mages, as well as Jedi, needed to train and develop their abilities to master magic. You need to fully control yourself, observe self-discipline.

Witchers

To create witchers, children are put to the Trial of the Grasses and mutations, so then they can also control the force. In SW a person who is sensitive to force is one who has midi-chlorians in his blood. This may indicate that children in the Witcher were forcibly subjected to mutations in order to produce midi-chlorians in their blood. Thus, the witchers were a kind of clone (while there are magicians, elves and their descendants who have "innate abilities” for magic, that is, the ability to control the Force).

As mentioned earlier, to be a Jedi, you need to show remarkable self-control, it is necessary that the Jedi refused attachments, because otherwise, they become vulnerable. We can find something similar in the description of witchers: they are devoid of emotions, to be dispassionate defenders against monsters, so as not to be distracted by human problems and conflicts.

Besides, there are Mandalorians in the SW universe, whose codex and way of life is quite close to the witchers'. So, it is quite possible that the legends of the witchers became the source of the idea/culture of the Mandalorians.

Crystals and Places of Power

As you know, to create a lightsaber, you need to find a special crystal that can be filled with power. Something similar can be found in the game The Witcher 3. In this game there are Places of Power, which are a single "cromlech”, that is an elongated boulder, from the centre of which comes a certain colour glow, very similar to what crystals can produce from SW. And this stone exudes Force.

So, it can be deposits of such crystals that simply absorbed the power, as they were formed at the place of its accumulation (although it is possible that they could be filled with Power by elves, during some rite).

In general, based on this, we can assume that the world of The Witcher is connected with the worlds of SW, and the events of the Witcher precede the events of SW.

[littlehollyleaf]

On the subject of stuff tumblr is LOVING right now and I know/feel that objectively I should also adore, but tragically DO.NOT

Detroit Evolution

I WISH I loved it. I really really do.

It's got so many tropes I fucking love (inc one half of the pairing having nightmares and the other frantically trying to wake and comfort them - UGH! the stuff of my angst and h/c loving DREAMS, I cannot tell you how amazing it was to see that visualized onscreen, I don't even know of any HET tv/film versions of that!)

But... alas, as a whole I just... don't feel it :(

Mostly because throughout my Detroit Become Human experience Gavin was... simply a nothing character to me. Or a simple, prejudice dick at best with no emotional depth. I mean, I appreciate the complexity of the fanon version of him, but... I never saw/felt any of it in the 'canon' (bunny ears here cos the nature of the game makes the very concept of canon crazy fluid!). And as for Nines, well, he simply never existed for me, I only found out about that narrative possibility via the fandom (can't even remember if I've unlocked it in any of my playthroughs yet).

So... I am just way too disconnected from the characters and their story to emotionally invest in the film.

As I was watching I found myself often thinking - this is a great scene/trope... but I would enjoy it more between Connor and Hank. Cos I felt there was a lot of overlap between the two relationships, with the whole 'used to hate androids but changed their mind and grew close to this one android especially' thing and the 'used to be an emotionless machine but uncovered their innate humanity and grew close to this one human especially' thing. Only whereas I had experienced that growth in Hank and Connor and thus emotionally invested in it, I had not experienced it with Gavin and Nines. And yet the film starts with all of that, unexperienced, growth as backstory so... idk, it felt like I was watching the final episode of a show I'd never seen, so the intense emotional stuff didn't mean anything to me

:(

(I do understand Gavin and Nines and their characters/story are different to Hank and Connor fyi - the film did a good job of exploring various stuff that made each of them individual. Like Gavin's backstory of being recruited as a cop. And Nine's simulation of Gavin, since he never had an Amanda. And ofc their dynamic IS DIFFERENT - the whole 'I hate you - you love me' thing is nicely unique to them. And that's without touching on the controversial stuff about whether Hank and Connor's relationship is a romantic one or a father-son one - Gavin and Nines' dynamic def do not have that ambiguity! I just... couldn't connect to the aspects specific to Gavin and Nines, unfortunately. My established connection to Connor and Hank was/is simply much stronger and kept drawing me to the similarities to them).

So that's me on that. For all the people who weren't asking :p

All the hype over this fan film I keep seeing still makes me smile though :) Have at it fandom! I'd join you if I could <3

[vitos-ordination-song]

Civilization and Its Discontents is interesting so far. Freud situates the unconscious as a stay over from human evolution. he didn’t view our ego-feeling as innate but instead formed by separating the “external” and “internal” during growth. obviously he wasn’t the first to say this but he did know that human consciousness was far greater than the “ego.” he called having a deeper connection to the universe the “oceanic feeling.” he’s touching on something seen in eastern religions (religion in general really) and his work was the starting point for Jung to do further work. 

my criticism would be that he’s a white westerner writing in the 20th century lol. he’s anti-religion and pessmistic about human nature. he thinks it’s a BAD thing when people experience a breakdown between self and other (it can be but he pathologizes it). idk I’ve never liked the tendency for psychoanalysts to be like, humans are terrible and I, a human, am uniquely qualified to understand other people who are basically animals. 

[icewindandboringhorror]

I have a question about your fantasy worlds. Are there the same type of illnesses (mental and physical) as in our world or is it something that's different between each species/race?

me, whenst getting a question about anything vaguely related to fantasy stuff:

This isn’t something that I’ve thought about too broadly (in the sense that usually I think about illnesses for each species as I’m making them, rather than on the large scale of the entire world as a whole) but I can give some general details about it so far ,,

(this actually isn’t too long, and is much shorter than my other posts where I ramble about stuff, but I guess I’ll put it under a read more anyway just because I’m not sure about whether the length of it would be annoying to people who don’t want to read it or not lol) 

——————-

MENTAL ILLNESS

The humans of our world (earth) and the humans (and other humanoid species) of Nanyevimi are generally pretty similar, at least in terms of brain structure and some other biological things. Though the worlds aren’t connected at all (since.. Nanyevimi is an entirely separate fantasy universe lol…), humans and other creatures in my world I guess  just happened to evolve under somewhat similar circumstances, as the worlds are fairly similar to one another, at least in certain environmental and atmospheric ways and stuff. (also obviously just.. as an earth human, when creating a fantasy world I’m going to base humanoid creatures there kind of off the humanoid creatures that already exist around me lol) 

Though, in Nanyevimi, modern humanoid species have been around much longer than earth humans have been on earth**, and also magic and stuff exists in that world, so since they’ve had much more time to evolve and outside factors influencing them that are different than on earth, obviously they’re not all EXACTLY the same. While some are very close (like a human or an elf from Nanyevimi could probably be understood well by a regular earth human doctor or something, since physically they work nearly the same), others (especially older or more magical species) may not be as similar to us. 

**( Though most history in Nanyevimi any further back than 2million years is pretty much lost due to the Mysterious Time Gap, there are still a few scattered remains of ancient things. The already advanced* state of society 2million years ago when modern records ‘’begin’’, implies that though the details of it are lost, there definitely would have to have been years of development before that time. So most people assume advanced* humanoid life (magical species like Jhevona and elves and etc.) has been around in Nanyevimi for at least 3-4 million years, and earlier less evolved forms of them (maybe more animalistic forms, similar to how some primates are with humans) have been around even longer. So they’ve had a bit more time to change and split off from each other, and have more diversity than humans on earth do among themselves (though obviously that’s not the only reason, since.. there are a lot of things like magic that also influence their evolution being different from human’s evolution on earth, even if they occurred in environmentally similar ways and etc. ) 

*(“Advanced” in the sense of having complex communication and social structure, etc. Even 2 million years ago there were obviously huge cities and trade routes and advanced transportation technology and elaborate government systems and religions and cultural traditions and etc. etc. like what we see in the modern human realm today. Which again is why obviously civilization in Nanyevimi is older than 2million years, even if records stop at that point, all those things don’t just spring up out of nowhere lol, just nobody seems to remember what came before them.) 

ANYWAY, 

basically most of the brain parts and functions are fairly similar between humans and many supernatural species. Supernatural species are more likely to have variation in physical areas other than the brain, such as  having extra organs (or less), different skeletal frames, different limb structure, processing food in a different way, different patterns of hair growth, horns, other anatomy things , physical changes that vary due to magical properties, etc. 

But the brain structure in most cases will be fairly alike between all (earth humans, nanyevimi native humans, elves, jhevona, etc. While there are some recognizable differences , definitely in terms of structure and parts present it’s usually very similar between them), thus for the most part, mental illnesses in their world actually would be quite similar to ours, as the minds of supernatural creatures don’t operate too differently than our own and still have many similarities in their responses to things and the general way that the brain works.  

Though of course, this is something that varies by species, as some have mental illnesses that would be very specific to their own kind/people who experience the same things due to their species, such as groups with very unique psychological experiences, or etc. 

Like for example, due to inherently being open vehicles for spirits most of the time and also having the rare ability to create their own pockets of reality, the Verrucalt likely have some mental illness classifications that could be unique to themselves as it would be hard for the diagnostic criteria to apply to any other group since the problems would be so specified and unique.  Or they could maybe have the same diagnosis that a human has but in a very specific way, such as a severe phobia but specifically centered around their constant loss of control of their bodies to spirits or something that wouldn’t be applicable to any other species (especially not humans who don’t even have any remotely similar abilities), since by nature they are literally unable to experience the same scenario as the Verrucalt. 

And an extension of that would be that it could also vary by skill set some, and not just species (though a majority of abilities or one’s inherent powers are at least partially determined by their species). So like perhaps due to the unique nature of their situation, those who do soul magic commonly could have issues specifically related to that, like a very recognizable collection of symptoms that seems to occur only in people who use this type of magic, that may or may not be recognized as an illness but is debilitating to their functioning and exists solely due to their specific circumstance or things that only people who do that type of magic would be able to go through and have resulting issues from. 

Like maybe people who practice soul absorption (extremely rare) have a specific name for the mental symptoms and trauma that results from essentially merging the souls of others with your own having your minds connected for a while as they fade away inside of you, etc. Which literally just wouldn’t be applicable to anyone else except for those who have had that precise experience. 

–( sidenote: Though of course a lot of this depends on how specific you want to be with classifying a mental illness, and how broad you want to keep the criteria. Like usually diagnostic criteria are not extremely specific to situation (kind of like how OCD is a broad label, even though every person with OCD has their own unique obsessions and compulsions and way that they experience that, and there are some trends in what those may be about,  there’s still not like, multiple entirely differently classified disorders solely depending on precisely what your obsessions/compulsions are about or something, they are all just classified together under the broader label of ‘OCD’), so I might be being a bit over specific here, at least when viewed through the lens of human mental health knowledge. But I think given the lack of broad connection in the supernatural realm and how isolated smaller cultures and groups can be, they would have their own classifications for sometimes very specific things. 

Like for example, Jhevona who practice dream magic having their own label for basically ptsd that is SPECIFICALLY ptsd relating to trauma experienced during the course of being in a dream realm. As they personally experience that differently than they would in waking life, and perhaps conceptualize it differently , and feel it necessary to make a distinction between the two.  Even if in our world we would look at it and just say “those are the same thing, they both just fall under the label of PTSD”. 

idk  I try not to view their cultures through much of a lens of my culture (though obviously I still do, some element of framing from your own references is inescapable) so I don’t want to just say “oh well idk if the mental health system in my own country of the USA on the planet of the Earth would make a distinction between those things then they should be the same for elves as well”. When I really think in some cases, especially in isolated groups, it wouldn’t make sense for them to all conceptualize their health systems in the exact same ways. But I still wanted to clarify just in case anyone reading this would be like “but wait aren’t you being overly specific with mental illness classifications?”, like probably, in the context of our world,, but for an isolated group of demons only pulling from their own culture with their own specific innate magical abilities and own unique experiences, idk , they would probably make some distinctions that we wouldn’t.  ))–

But yeah, generally, a majority of humanoid supernatural creatures are prone to most of the same mental illnesses that humans are, though the way they conceptualize it and the rates of them will vary drastically by culture/species. Despite some more global areas, most groups and cultures are still quite isolated in the supernatural realm, and there is no real centralized mental health system, so  each group of people with a common experience (so mostly same species, or sometimes same ability set) would possibly have large differences between the way they conceptualize the same idea or the language they use even if they’re talking about the same thing. Or like mentioned above, they may draw more or less separations of specifics (like one culture would consider two similar sets of symptoms to be completely different disorders, and another group would perhaps classify them as both falling under the same thing, etc).

 But classification differences aside, their brains are pretty similar so they are prone to just about all of the same things humans are, with perhaps the addition of a few specialized mental illnesses resulting from their unique experiences that humans could never experience. 

Similarly,  depending on the species,  some mental illnesses may be more common while some may be nearly non-existent in the population,  just depending on the genes and especially environment they are in as a group.

 Like for example disorders seen in those who have been through repeated severe trauma would likely be pretty common in the Avirre’thel , mostly in the older generations, given the many periods in their past involving nearly constant violence coming from the Fanyin Elves, and also the unique issues of their immortality.

They can’t die and they’re mostly unable to pass out from pain alone, so like no matter if a gang of elves is beating you and your friends to ‘death’, you just have to live and experience it, and then you have to lay there for days/weeks in the woods in excruciating pain, just sitting there alive waiting for your own body to regenerate to the point that you can walk again, hoping they don’t come back and find you and attack you a second time,, etc etc.

 Being unable to die, means you’ll often live through things that are meant to kill you or would have killed you. Not that dying is a good thing, but just that you’re living through tons and tons of experiences that most people would never have to live through, because for them, the experience would have reached an end at this point (even if that end is death).. But since that’s not an option you just have to keep on living through it. You could get violently “murdered” and have your limbs ripped off and be burned alive 3 times in  just the span of a month and you’d still stay alive and mostly conscious through all of it, now retaining the details and memories and trauma from the entire experience. 

Also, not dying means longer life span, so where most people only have like 100 years or so of experiences to deal with, you’ve got thousands of years.  Where most people would die during being attacked, or die naturally at a fairly low old age, you just continue on forever, accumulating more and more (potentially harmful) experiences, with no break between them. You could probably go 70 years without having too much bad happen to you, but every extra year you live is another year something could happen, and by the time you get to like 700 years old it’s almost definite you’ve been through something traumatic at least once. Which obviously you wont remember every experience in your lifetime perfectly, but the longer you live, just statistically, the more time you have to experience harmful things and live through them now being affected by them, especially if you’ve spent those thousand years in a mostly hostile climate where elves are trying to burn your village down all the time and shooting your children with arrows for funsies.

 So anyway, the implications of the high amount of adverse experiences they’ve been through  due to their environment, in combination with all of this being nearly inescapable for them (you can’t just die and have it be over with),  would probably mean a much larger percentage of the population suffers from a variety of  trauma related symptoms and illnesses than other groups would on average.   

Whereas,  a group like the beach dwelling Verrucalt (as they are unaware of their hunted status and living in pretty much complete peace) would likely not experience hardly any of those same issues, given they’ve never had many conflicts in their environment and do not have much violence or even interpersonal conflicts culturally (like even abusive relationships and etc. are hardly even a thing, given their culture and also the small number, it’s easy for everyone to keep an eye on everyone as a community). It’s rare that a beach  verrucalt would experience really much trauma in their lives in general (especially since they are largely not as affected by the spirits as other verrucalt seem to be, and have their own way of rationalizing it/dealing with it culturally), aside from maybe accidental injuries or having a loved on die or something (and even then they would likely have a very strong and caring support system to help them cope with it), but definitely not on the scale of like widespread turmoil and violence etc etc. They’re a tiny isolated community with strong social connections and practically no outside or internal conflict, so they’d probably have much lower rates of trauma related symptoms than average. 

-

So like anything, it would vary some by population, but in the supernatural realm it’s just that population is much more likely to be dependent on what species you are (due to general isolation),  so the rates of particular issues in a population, and the issues (and issue classifications) themselves, would be likely to vary by species and cultural environment, as well as unique abilities or experiences a group may have. But other than that, they’d be similar to us in most basic ways at least. 

-

PHYSICAL ILLNESS

Physical illnesses on the other hand would be much much more varied, given that the biggest thing supernatural species vary in is parts of their anatomy and etc, which is why they may have many more diseases unique to them . Like a human could never get a Jhevona disease featuring infection of the horns, because humans don’t have horns, etc etc. 

Also, given that species in the supernatural realm are too genetically different usually to even breed, diseases are pretty much determined by species, as it would be really rare for a demon disease to show up in elves, or a vampiric disease to affect a ythrili, at least not in the same way (like if virus or something even did rarely hop species, it may be totally nothing to one group but devastating to another, etc.).

This is part of why, outside of EXTREMELY isolated populations, most people in the supernatural realm are pretty educated on species to species interactions (usually not ALL species because that would be A LOT of info, but at least how interactions would work with their OWN species and others that are significant (such as a species who’s blood they would be deathly allergic to or etc.)). 

With so many different groups there is a lot of potential for harm (such as most people in one species being carriers of an infection that doesn’t affect THEM but that would make an elf extremely sick, or a certain subspecies of demon having blood** that if a mere drop of it is ingested could make a vampire violently ill for years or etc) 

**(Blood is weird but thought to possibly contain magical properties or something because it seems to be a Big Thing in the supernatural realm, like blood of certain species can be helpful or harmful to you depending on the species you are. Whereas in the human realm it seems like, most blood is just blood..like you’re not going to drink some dog blood and drop dead on the spot or drink a monkey’s blood and suddenly feel more energized than you’ve ever been in your life. But with supernatural creatures (especially magic capable ones, which is why it’s thought to be a result of magic properties but not scientifically confirmed by anything scholars can detect) a lot of their blood can have specific combinations of interactions (MOSTLY harmful) depending on what species you are and what species the blood is from and how it comes into contact with you (like some blood is only harmful if ingested (like eaten), some is only harmful if mixed (like if you had an open wound and somehow got another persons blood in it), and some can be harmful even externally (like just having a drop of their blood on your skin could be harmful (though this is more rare)). 

Though still, the realm is kind of isolated so you usually only know about the species you come into contact with or the ones near you (like an isolated moth species down in the south wouldn’t know how they react to the blood or diseases of a species of northern elf they’re never even heard of in their lives). But even most isolated groups go out of their way to obtain some amount of information, at least about the people they’re most likely to come into contact with, and are usually very very cautious about letting outsiders in but especially about breeding or coming into contact with blood or getting close enough to them to catch a virus or something

 (which is part of why the supernatural realm, despite having such a wide variety of people and technology and magic and things that would make it easy for people to communicate, tends to be so isolated and inconsistent (like one area using glowing flowers exclusively for lighting and you go maybe 200 miles north and this other group has advanced electrical grids and then 1000 miles away from there people are just using fire and steam for everything, a little while further and people just use their own magic for lighting, etc. ) , since there have been many times in most groups where outsiders came in and things Didn’t Go Very Well (mostly like illness and etc.). Though most groups are not hostile to outsiders or harmful towards them, they do tend to be very cautious and distrusting about it, which gets in the way of trade or attempts at globalizing certain technologies and ideas. 

~(side note:  most people are okay with this. Like it’s not like there’s huge movements to globalize things, other than having the few central global areas and hubs of trade and stuff. Due to species differences and how large cultural gaps and stuff tend to be, most people, even in more global areas tend to have a cultural belief of like “well they’re not doing anything harmful to anyone and seem to be happy how they are so why intervene and try to introduce our own way of doing things”.  Though there are some groups who feel the opposite (many elves are bad about this, especially Fanyin and their allies),  I’d say a majority of cultures in the supernatural realm do not hold  ‘assimilate others to our ways’ as a high cultural belief or moral standard, thus even if it weren’t for the diseases and more biological basis for isolation, they would likely stay fairly separate anyway, aside from occasional trade and maybe intervening if some group is murdering people or something. There are not many attempts at globalizing technologies in the first place, etc etc etc 

(though it’s hard to know if this belief is naturally occurring or if the ‘just let other do what they’re doing as long as it isn’t harmful’ mentality being culturally common is in some ways actually a result of it often being historically bad to enter random groups because of disease (so like people who like to get in other’s business end up catching weird diseases and die, while those cultures who prefer to leave others alone don’t get into the same issues with genetic incompatibilities or viruses they have no immunity to and  end up surviving to pass on the ‘hey why not leave people alone’ mentality etc. etc))~

So anyway, diseases and physical illnesses can vary a lot between groups, and occasionally can end up being harmful to other groups if spread..But this isn’t much of a problem, since most groups in the realm are fairly isolated and have little contact with other species or cultures to begin with, and on top of that, most species are too different from each other for their illnesses to even be applicable to others . A majority of groups in the realm are so different they can’t even breed with each other, don’t have much in common culturally, live on different time scales (like an immortal species living next to a species that only lives 300 years), so aside from usually having a base knowledge of whether species around you are harmful to interact with or not (if the blood or naturally carried diseases of your neighbors can kill you, etc.), the health and physical aspects of other groups/species aren’t going to affect you much, unless they’re somehow applicable to you as well. 

Though supernatural creatures can still technically have some conditions that are also common in humans, it just depends on their anatomy specifically. Like some Jhevona don’t have digestive tracts so they likely wouldn’t get like, human digestive issues or whatever, but they do all usually posses hearts which function mostly the same ways as human hearts, so a heart attack or other heart condition could be something that a Jhevona may have, just like humans do. 

There are a lot of species specific health problems though,  but I haven’t planned a lot of them out yet lol. Other than like, the ‘glass sickness’ in the Ythrili , and I have mentioned that due to the deals with the ancient demon during creation with the originals, the Avirre’thel/vampires do have a lot of disease in the population (as I think that was one of the curses/cons to their agreement with the demon) but I haven’t planned many of them specifically, other than maybe mentioning that thing where they often grow too many extra fangs (like wisdom teeth but Worse) and have to have a lot of surgery to remove them lol.   

It’s definitely a Thing that all species will have their own unique health conditions or common complications, I just, don’t have many established examples  because I haven’t written that far for some of my species lol ! 

But yeah, most diseases in the supernatural realm are species specific, or specific to only a few species, which is why it’s really common for doctors to be specialists only within a certain group (such as treating elves exclusively or etc.). Though there can be broader range healers, especially people who do healing magic. Usually with higher level healing magics, what you heal isn’t dependent on your knowledge of their anatomy and is more of a general repair spell, so expert magic healers can sometimes deal with a huge variety of smaller illnesses or surface injuries and such, regardless of species. Though there are still many injuries that would be too complex/take more magical energy than most healers have/require some extensive knowledge of the species’ anatomy  in order to fix, as healing magic is not uniform or broadly applicable for all injuries at all, just many, and depends heavily on skill level or exact nature of the magic.  And especially in global areas, there are many doctors who specialize in as many species as possible to know about and treat all forms of diseases and injuries even in those with totally different anatomy or etc. 

But for the most part, medical systems are centralized to the people they are related to. Like in Navyete (where the Avirre’thel live) most doctors are vampires or demons specializing in vampiric or demonic conditions, because those are the two largest populations in Navyete (though of course also some doctors for humans and elven refugees coming in from Fanyin)... but like if you’re like a Ythrili or something and you end up in Navyete somehow, you’d have trouble getting medical care, unless it’s a more simple injury that could be helped with regular healing magic. Diseases and other physical ailments and general illnesses tend to be heavily specific to a person’s individual species. 

Though there are many broad conditions (like most everyone can get broken bones or heart conditions or a brain injury), every species is going to have a lot of illnesses and especially viruses and diseases and such that are specific to one group or a few similar groups and not anyone else.

 Sometimes there can be slight variation within a species (like between sub-species or etc.), but that usually has more to do with differing rates of health issues than having different health issues entirely (like maybe one sub group within a species has like slightly higher immunity to something than the rest of their species, but wouldn’t have their own specific diseases that don’t affect the rest of the population). 

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–

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SO YEAH,,, uh,, the main point I guess is: Yes, technically species in the supernatural realm can have some of the same mental and physical illnesses as we do in our own human earth

but:   

Mental illnesses are the most similar, though still have some amount of variation by species or other classifications of similar experience (and will be conceptualized very differently depending on culture)

and 

Physical  illnesses CAN be the same  as ours depending on the species (like whether they have the same body parts we do or not),  but do tend to have much much more variety, and health conditions are usually specific to species and their own unique genetics and anatomy (and will also be conceptualized differently by each culture). 

Hopefully this makes some amount of sense and isn’t just me rambling forever, like usual when I feel the need to do too many side tangents lol, sorry for this being so long (and despite it’s length I still feel it’s too basic.. like I should have more specific examples of health conditions planned out but I don’t so it feels Incomplete lol… curse me for not having like, an entire list of supernatural health conditions on hand > : U ) ! But hopefully it answers the question well enough ! If you have any more questions, feel free to ask! Thanks for giving me an excuse to talk about things I like to think about too much lmao