#and his mother's culture

[gingermintpepper]

In my Zeus bag today so I'm just gonna put it out there that exactly none of the great Ancient Greek warrior-heroes stayed loyal and faithful and completely monogamous and yet none of them have their greatness questioned nor do we question why they had the cultural prominence that they did and still do.

Jason, the brilliant leader of the Argo, got cold feet when it came to Medea - already put off by some of her magic and then exiled from his birthland because of her political ploys, he took Creusa to bed and fully intended on marrying her despite not properly dissolving things with Medea.

Theseus was a fierce warrior and an incredibly talented king but he had a horrible temper and was almost fatally weak to women. This is the man who got imprisoned in the Underworld for trying to get a friend laid, the man who started the whole Attic War because he couldn't keep his legs closed.

And we cannot at all forget Heracles for whom a not inconsiderable amount of his joy in life was loving people then losing the people around him that he loved. Wives, children, serving boys, mentors, Heracles had a list of lovers - male and female - long enough to rival some gods and even after completing his labours and coming down to the end of his life, he did not have one wife but three.

And y'know what, just because he's a cultural darling, I'll put Achilles up here too because that man was a Theseus type where he was fantastic at the thing he was born to do (that is, fight whereas Theseus' was to rule) but that was not enough to eclipse his horrid temper and his weakness to young pretty things. This is the man that killed two of Apollo's sons because they wouldn't let him hit - Tenes because he refused to let Achilles have his sister and Troilus who refused Achilles so vehemently that he ran into Apollo's temple to avoid him and still couldn't escape.

All four of these men are still celebrated as great heroes and men. All four of these men are given the dignity of nuance, of having their flaws treated as just that, flaws which enrich their character and can be used to discuss the wider cultural point of what truly makes a hero heroic. All four of these men still have their legacies respected.

Why can that same mindset not be applied to Zeus? Zeus, who was a warrior-king raised in seclusion apart from his family. Zeus who must have learned to embrace the violence of thunder for every time he cried as a babe, the Corybantes would bang their shields to hide the sound. Zeus learned to be great because being good would not see the universe's affairs in its order.

The wonderful thing about sympathy is that we never run out of it. There's no rule stopping us from being sympathetic to multiple plights at once, there's no law that necessitate things always exist on the good-evil binary. Yes, Zeus sentenced Prometheus to sufferation in Tartarus for what (to us) seems like a cruel reason. Prometheus only wanted to help humans! But when you think about Prometheus' actions from a king's perspective, the narrative is completely different: Prometheus stole divine knowledge and gifted it to humans after Zeus explicitly told him not to. And this was after Prometheus cheated all the gods out of a huge portion of wealth by having humans keep the best part of a sacrifice's meat while the gods must delight themselves with bones, fat and skin. Yes, Zeus gave Persephone away to Hades without consulting Demeter but what king consults a woman who is not his wife about the arrangement of his daughter's marriage to another king? Yes, Zeus breaks the marriage vows he set with Hera despite his love of her but what is the Master of Fate if not its staunchest slave?

The nuance is there. Even in his most bizarre actions, the nuance and logic and reason is there. The Ancient Greeks weren't a daft people, they worshipped Zeus as their primary god for a reason and they did not associate him with half the vices modern audiences take issue with. Zeus was a father, a visitor, a protector, a fair judge of character, a guide for the lost, the arbiter of revenge for those that had been wronged, a pillar of strength for those who needed it and a shield to protect those who made their home among the biting snakes. His children were reflections of him, extensions of his will who acted both as his mercy and as his retribution, his brothers and sisters deferred to him because he was wise as well as powerful. Zeus didn't become king by accident and it is a damn shame he does not get more respect.

[worstloki]

Mu Qing ascending is objectively so funny considering Feng Xin and Xie Lian also do. Out of the people in your kingdom who accomplished immortality there’s this guy who used to be your servant but is now on equal rank to you and he‘s super rude now and also thinks you hate him because he remembers when you were 18 and lacked socioeconomic-interpersonal awareness

[theriverbeyond]

is anyone gonna match my freak (i think John Gaius should smoke a bowl with the traitor Baru Cormerant)

[hualianisms]

on twitter here and here, forayuarchive has been talking about how LLH & FDB really act like an old married couple, and i couldn't stop thinking about it too. as a native chinese speaker, the level of informality, familiarity and bickering, in how FDB and LLH speak to one another (especially in the later episodes) are reminiscent of how bickering old married chinese couples are often depicted.

when FDB is angry/upset at LLH, he calls him "死莲花" - "Damn Lotus/Damn Lianhua". the way FDB says it is in a manner where you might imagine old spouses scolding one another when nagging/bickering (to clarify, it's not romantic per se, but it's extremely informal & familiar).

for example, in ep 35, FDB calls him Damn Lotus in the note he left LLH when he went to look for the styx flower. CN fanghua fans on weibo managed to painstakingly transcribe the note (see forayuarchive's tweet about it here with the eng translation) - it's extremely informal and reads like a short note a spouse/partner would write when leaving their shared home in a hurry.

i also still can't believe LLH calls FDB "xiaobao", it speaks for itself. 小宝 Xiao Bao (literal meaning is "little treasure") is usually something you call literal babies/children AND is FDB's family nickname for him so if you're calling a grown man that in front of his parents and his colleagues and strangers and literally everyone, then he's either your biological family or he's your bf/partner. (it's a level of intimacy that would make me feel embarrassed as a third party hearing LLH call FDB that in front of everyone😭)

and not to mention the deleted line of FDB calling a sick/unconscious LLH "xiaohua'er". (see video & meta of the deleted line by forayuarchive here, translation of the deleted line by ttiesanjiao here). xiaohua'er is so intimate, definitely something one might call a lover 😭

(*for more name meta, see forayuarchive's twitter thread meta about all the names that FDB and LLH call one another, and in what situations each particular name is used)

in any case these are NOT what a disciple calls his shifu or a son calls his dad. these nicknames are far too informal and familiar - no son talks to his father like that and no disciple talks to his shifu like that. (now, an angry spouse however...)

(there's also the fact that FDB explicitly rejects their relationship as being anything other than that between 2 adult equals - when LLH jokes that FDB should bow to him as disciple, FDB immediately rejects the idea, saying that he was only joking about wanting to be LLH's disciple, that FDB is too old now. he firmly sees himself as an adult equal to LLH.)

tl;dr within months of knowing each other, LLH & FDB act as familiar as an old couple 10 years married, skipping the entire courtship stage 😭

[gophergal]

I'm like a bull in a china shop Knocking off a knockoff Cause I got no culture I got no culture of mine...

[fireplaceisanyplace]

I've seen a few fics and posts about Charles learning about Edwardian courting customs and courting Edwin. I've read one or two fics about Edwin learning Urdu or Hindi. What about Edwin learning about Indian culture as something that's connected to Charles' mother's side of the family that, presumably, his father tried to supress, and his peers killed him for, but is something Charles can freely connect with and reclaim without that threat?

This is all to say I want to see Edwin explaining his suitability as a husband friend to a bunch of Charles' old relatives that can see ghosts and them being confused because it seems like the dead boys already got gay ghost married 30+ years ago and Charles saying that he can't say for certain that he's in love with Edwin and all his relatives rolling their eyes and asking what that has to do with marriage and obviously some form of love has grown and they're doing fine, no grandchildren or reincarnation, but they're accepting the gay thing, so they can accept those oddities too.

[incorrectly-quoted-queers]

I like Strange New Worlds but boy is their Spock behavior strange.

"taking out" the Vulcan in Spock should make his body feel off but ffs he's still Spock. I don't think they intended it this way but the way they wrote this whole scenario is like having an AfroLatina character "lose" their Latina side and suddenly not be able to make a tortilla or speak their native spanish. I mean. What?

Their whole narrative on him being human and Vulcan and showing "human" as like the fun/passionate side he's denying himself is starting to feel very anti-Vulcan, which in its own way feels super white centrist. We can go all in on the bacon scene but I'm not Jewish so more knowledgable Jewish people about the cultural *disaster* that choice was can cover the mess that is but... Yikes.

They've even done mixed race struggles better with other characters. B'Elanna in Voyager has a great arc reconciling her Klingon and human sides throughout multiple episodes and none of them imply weird shit like this. They all encourage her to accept herself where's she's at, no matter how much Klingon or human "percentage" that means. It just means both.

And in all fairness, B'Elanna's portrayal is in no way perfect but its better than *this*.

Someone on Twitter said this would've been a much more impactful episode if Spock spent all of it fearing he'd lose all connection to his Vulcan side, only to realize that (like his human adopted sister!!) He is still a child of Vulcan regardless of his geneology/biological makeup. But nah. This. *Bacon*.

After such a strong story about hope, augments, refugees, and prejudice a few episodes ago we get this? Shenanigans.

[meirimerens]

the pathologic Kin is largely fictionalized with a created language that takes from multiple sources to be its own, a cosmogony & spirituality that does not correlate to the faiths (mostly Tengrist & Buddhist) practiced by the peoples it takes inspirations from, has customs, mores and roles invented for the purposes of the game, and even just a style of dress that does not resemble any of these peoples', but it is fascinating looking into specifically to me the sigils and see where they come from... watch this:

P2 Layers glyphs take from the mongolian script:

while the in-game words for Blood, Bones and Nerves are mongolian directly, it is interesting to note that their glyphs do not have a phonetic affiliation to the words (ex. the "Yas" layer of Bones having for glyph the equivalent of the letter F, the "Medrel" layer of Nerves having a glyph the equivalent of the letter È,...)

the leatherworks on the Kayura models', with their uses of angles and extending lines, remind me of the Phags Pa Script (used for Tibetan, Mongolian, Chineses, Uyghur language, and others)

some of the sigils also look either in part or fully inspired by Phags Pa script letters...

some look closer to the mongolian or vagindra (buryat) script

looking at the Herb Brides & their concept art, we can see bodypainting that looks like vertical buryat or mongolian script (oh hi (crossed out: Mark) Phags Pa script):

shaped and reshaped...

[sergeant-bucky]

Shuri makes her way down to the docks. It’s the middle of the night. She walks down to the end of the dock and takes off her sandals. Before putting her feet over the water and waiting.

She throws a pebble in. And after a moment she hears someone surface.

“Technically I am not in your ocean.” She sasses.

“And… I come bearing gifts.” She smiles. Scooting over a bit and putting the dock beside her. Before reaching into her bag.

“I bet it’s been a while since you had chocolate. And it probably tastes different than what you are used to…” she rambles bringing out a chocolate bar.

“Would you like to try it?” She asks.

@did-he-freeze

Namor sits down next to her, glad to see she's not trying to jump in without her beads this time. "Chocolate, as you call it, when I was young was a form of payment, only to be consumed by the rulers or priests... We never had any in the water, so we relied on other things to create the same system..." He explains a bit awkwardly. "Yes, I would like to try some... My mother always said the smell of it was something to soothe the soul..."

[platformcowboyboots]

if I start thinking about james and michelles relationship for too long I start foaming at the mouth and going fucking insane

[yea-baiyi]

the key to understanding hua cheng’s appearance and how he occupies space is that he’s a transmasc goth who’s committed to red and silver as his aesthetic. ok. the layered hair the outfits the boots the chains. he doesn’t shave off his eyebrows and redraw them only because he is a shapeshifter and so his eyebrows grow the way he wants.

[edwinisms]

I find it so hard to believe edwin only has a first and last name. like that boy has GOT to have at LEAST one middle name. and/or a baptismal name. like tell me you can’t see this boy having like. four or five names

[imakemywings]

Lowkey obsessed with the naming tradition of the line of Elwe/Thingol.

It just fascinates me how Thingol did not create the “El-” prefix naming tradition despite being the origin of it. Luthien’s given name bears no resemblance to either of her parents’ and neither does the name of her son, Dior. Yet Dior named himself Eluchil and took up the lordship of Doriath (something Luthien impliedly rejected when she and Beren chose to make their home elsewhere) and called his children Elured, Elurin, Elwing, and in their refugee’s home, cut off from her family and her heritage, Elwing named her own sons Elrond and Elros. 

And then, that thousands of years later, as lord of his own realm, in the safety of Rivendell, lifetimes since he last saw either of his parents or lived among the Doriathrim, Elrond names his sons Elrohir and Elladan.

It feels especially important as a claim on Iathrim heritage considering Doriath’s destruction. It was in the wake of the ruinous war with Nogrod, when Dior stepped in to try to rebuild, that he chose to name his children after a grandfather he never met, the legendary Elu Thingol, once called Elwe. It’s after the total obliteration of Doriath as a kingdom at the hands of fellow Elves that Elwing claims this tradition in naming her own children. And for Elrond, who never saw Doriath, who was deprived of the chance to know his mother or be raised among the Iathrim in Sirion (or the Gondolindrim, but that’s another issue), when he names his firstborn children, he reaches for that heritage in Doriath, that connection and in doing so declares himself of the line of Thingol and of Elwing, and his children also. He marks them as the next generation of this bloodline, he recollects the life and death of Doriath and its people, keeping alive that memory, faint as it might be.

[ellilyre]

"why do you like Tethis so much"

Alright

Listen closely

Just 3 words

Powerful Ocean Lady

[skyloftian-nutcase]

I can't help but wonder if the Gdorf that was transported to a new land. I think Golden Mercy?

I wonder if he realizes that the entire reason that OoT Link even came after him was because he essentially killed the closest thing the boy had to a dad? And then he went on to kill OoT Zelda's dad, too. So, now he has 2 children after him.

Like, does he even recognize how much his actions upturned the lives of those 2 children?

Not only that, but he went to his neighboring kingdom, put on this show, & attacked the King's allies to steal 3 sacred relics, even killing one of them in the process! He threatened them, invaded a holy site, & stole what amounted to the holy grail.

Isn't that tantamount to destruction of cultural property? You know, a war crime??

Like, how does that man rationalize all this?

He really doesn’t, because he’s a selfish piece of garbage. That’s what happens with selfish people, they do not care about the impact they make on others, only what benefits them. To Ganondorf, it’s all just things that need to be done because he will get what he wants, and he does not care who burns to accomplish that. He’s king, it’s his right to take what he wants. That’s how he grew up.

Ganondorf hasn’t learned his lesson. The main reason he doesn’t cause a bunch of problems any earlier than he did was simply because he was kind of satisfied with what he had for a little while, until he learned that the Triforce existed in this Hyrule. Having children has helped him a little, making him gentler at times, trying to make him more rational and reasonable, but at the end of the day he never addressed the issues that led to his actions in his own original Hyrule, and therefore he hasn’t learned from it. As decent as he becomes in his new home, when the temptation strikes he doesn’t fight it, and giving in to that urge makes him completely reprehensible as time goes along. He starts a war, he eventually kills his wife when she turns on him, and he tries to kill his daughter when she teams up with Link. And by heaven did he completely upturn their lives, the Gerudo people, and all of Hyrule.

But worry not, my dear lovely, a few thousand years in agonizing captivity will make him far more contemplative. :)

I mean, I love writing the guy, but that doesn’t make him a good person. The reason I use the good Ganondorf tag is not because of his actions prior to Hyrule Warriors, it’s because Golden Mercy gives him a chance at redemption.

[ahli-stuff]

*Sweating throwing up nauseous dizzy*

What if vox is Asian American